WILLIAM R. PERKINS 
LIBRARY 


DUKE UNIVERSITY 


THE OLD NORTHWEST 


LCD) Sa 


THF CHRu.. 

OF AMwRICA SERIES 
ALLEN JOHNSON 
EDITOR 
GERHARD R. LOMER 


CHARLES W. JEFFERYS 
ASSISTANT EDITORS 


THE OLD NORTHWEST 


A CHRONICLE OF THE 
OHIO VALLEY AND BEYOND 
BY FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG 


NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO. 
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


1921 


131028 


fi i ‘ i 
} 


Copyright, 1919, by Y. ale 


reat 9,1949-30 TS 
oc . AGE. 
Lis ri } Fan | 
ey 75 CONTENTS | ¥Oh 
5 1 a Li ih 
a eam CONSPIRACY 


as ““§ LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 


THE REVOLUTION BEGINS 


IV. THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 


. WAYNE, THE SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 
THE GREAT MIGRATION 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 


THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE NEW WEST 
SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 
XI. THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 


131028 


se 


THE OLD NORTHWEST ' 


CHAPTER I 
PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY 


Tue fall of Montreal, on September 8, 1760, —~ 
while the plains about the city were still dotted 
with the white tents of the victorious English and 
colonial troops, was indeed an event of the deepest 
consequence to America and to the world. By the 
articles of capitulation which were signed by the 
Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor of New France, 
Canada and all its dependencies westward to the ~ 
Mississippi passed to the British Crown. Virtu- 
ally ended was the long struggle for the dominion of 
‘the New World. Open now for English occupation 
and settlement was that vast country lying south of | ~ 
the Great Lakes between the Ohio and the Missis- 


sippi — which we know as the Old Northwest — 
1 


THE OLD NORTHWEST 


ay the seat of five great commonwealths of the 
United States. 

With an ingenuity born of necessity, the French 
pathfinders and colonizers of the Old Northwest 
had chosen for their settlements sites which would 
serve at once the purposes of the priest, the trader, 
and the soldier; and with scarcely an exception 
these sites are as important today as when they 
were first selected. Four regions, chiefly, were 
still occupied by the French at the time of the ca- 
pitulation of Montreal. The most important, as 
well as the most distant, of these regions was on the 
east bank of the Mississippi, opposite and below 
the present city of St. Louis, where a cluster of mis- 
sions, forts, and trading-posts held the center of 
the tenuous line extending from Canada to Loui- 
siana. A second was the Illinois country, centering “ 
about the citadel of St. Louis which La Salle had 
erected in 1682 on the summit of “Starved Rock,” 
near the modern town of Ottawa in Illinois. A 
third was the valley of the Wabash, where in the 
early years of the eighteenth century Vincennes / 
had become the seat of a colony commanding both 
the Wabash and the lower Ohio. And the fourth 
o, 


founded by the doughty Cadillac in 1701, had as- 


PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY 3 


sumed such strength that for fifty years it had dis- 
couraged the ambitions of the English to make the 
Northwest theirs. 
Sir Jeffrey Amherst, to whom Vaudreuil sur- 
rendered in 1760, forthwith dispatched to the 
western country a military force to take possession 
of the posts still remaining in the hands of the 
French. The mission was entrusted to a stalwart 


New Hampshire Scotch-Irishman, Major Robert a 


on ers, who as leader of a band of intrepid 

“‘rangers”’ had made himself the hero of the north- 
ern frontier. Two hundred men were chosen for 
the undertaking, and on the 13th of September 
the party, in fifteen whaleboats, started up the - 
St. Lawrence for Detroit. 

At the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, near the 
site of the present city of Cleveland, the travelers 
were halted by a band of Indian chiefs and warriors 
who, in the name of their great ruler Pontiac, de- 
manded to know the object of their journeying. 

Parleys followed, in which Pontiac himself took 
part, and it was explained that the French had 
surrendered Canada to the English and that the 
English merely proposed to assume control of the 
western posts, with a view to friendly relations be- 
tween the red men and the white men. The rivers, 


i THE OLD NORTHWEST 


it was promised, would flow with rum, and presents 
from the great King would be forthcoming in end- 
less profusion. The explanation seemed to satisfy 
the savages, and, after smoking the calumet with 
due ceremony, the chieftain and his followers with- 
drew. 

Late in November, Rogers and his men in their 
whaleboats appeared before the little palisaded 
town of Detroit. They found the French com- 
mander, Belétre, in surly humor and seeking to stir 
up the neighboring Wyandots and Potawatomi 
against them. But the attempt failed, and there 
was nothing for Belétre to do but yield. The 
French soldiery marched out of the fort, laid down 
their arms, and were sent off as prisoners down the 
river. The fleur-de-lis, which for more than half a 
century had floated over the village, was hauled 
down, and, to the accompaniment of cheers, the 
British ensign wasrun up. The red men looked on 


4 


with amazement at this display of English author- 


ity and marveled how the conquerors forbore to 
slay their vanquished enemies on the spot. 

Detroit in 1760 was a picturesque, lively, and 
rapidly growing frontier town. The central por- 
tions of the settlement, lying within the bounds of 
the present city, contained ninety or a hundred 


PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY 


small houses, chiefly of wood and roofed with bark 
or thatch. A well-built range of barracks afforded 
quarters for the soldiery, and there were two pub- 
lic buildings—a council house and a little church. 
The whole was surrounded by a square palisade 
twenty-five feet high, with a wooden bastion at 
each corner and a blockhouse over each gateway. 
A broad passageway, the chemin du ronde, lay 
next to the palisade, and on little narrow streets 
at the center the houses were grouped closely 
together. 

Above and below the fort the banks of the river 
were lined on both sides, for a distance of eight or 
nine miles, with little rectangular farms, so laid out 
as to give each a water-landing. On each farm was 
a cottage, with a garden and orchard, surrounded 
by a fence of rounded pickets; and the countryside 
rang with the shouts and laughter of a prosperous 
and happy peasantry. Within the limits of the 
settlement were villages of Ottawas, Potawatomi, 
and Wyandots, with whose inhabitants the French 
- lived on free and easy terms. “The joyous spark- 
ling of the bright blue water,” writes Parkman; 
“the green luxuriance of the woods; the white 
dwellings, looking out from the foliage; and in the 
distance the Indian wigwams curling their smoke 


THE OLD NORTHWEST 


_ainst the sky—all were mingled in one broad 
scene of wild and rural beauty.” 

At the coming of the English the French residents 
were given an opportunity to withdraw. Few, 
however, did so, and from the gossipy correspon- 
dence of the pleasure-loving Colonel Campbell, who 
for some months was left in command of the fort, 
it appears that the life of the place lost none of its 
gayety by the change of masters. Sunday card 
parties at the quarters of the commandant were 
festive affairs; and at a ball held in celebration of 
the King’s birthday the ladies presented an appear- 
ance so splendid as to call forth from the impres- 
sionable officer the most extravagant praises. A 
visit in the summer of 1761 from Sir William John- - 
son, general supervisor of Indian affairs on the 
frontier, became the greatest social event in the 
history of the settlement, if not of the entire West. 
Colonel Campbell gave a ball at which the guests 
danced nine hours. Sir William reciprocated with 
one at which they danced eleven hours. A round 
of dinners and calls gave opportunity for much dis- 
play of frontier magnificence, as well as for the con- 
sumption of astonishing quantities of wines and 
cordials. Hundreds of Indians were interested 
spectators, and the gifts with which they were gen- 


PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY — a 


erously showered were received with evidences of 
deep satisfaction. 

No amount of fiddling and dancing, however, 
- could quite drown apprehension concerning the 
safety of the post and the security of the English 
hold upon the great region over which this fort 
and its distant neighbors stood sentinel. Thou- 
sands of square miles of territory were committed 
to the keeping of not more than six hundred sol- 
diers. From the French there was little danger. 
But from the Indians anything might be expected. 
Apart from the Iroquois, the red men had been 
bound to the French by many ties of friendship and 
‘common interest, and in the late war they had 
scalped and slaughtered and burned unhesitatingly 
at the French command. Hardly, indeed, had the 
transfer of territorial sovereignty been made before 
murmurs of discontent began to be heard. 

Notwithstanding outward expressions of assent 
to the new order of things, a deep-rooted dislike 
on the part of the Indians for the English grew 
after 1760 with great rapidity. They sorely missed 
the gifts and supplies lavishly provided by the 
French, and they warmly resented the rapacity 
and arrogance of the British traders. The open 
contempt of the soldiery at the posts galled the 


ee 


8 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


Indians, and the confiscation of their lands drove 
them to desperation. In their hearts hope never 
died that the French would regain their lost domin-~ 
ion; and again and again rumors were set afloat 
that this was about to happen. The belief in such 
a reconquest was adroitly encouraged, too, by the 
surviving French settlers and traders. In 1761 
the tension among the Indians was increased by the 
appearance of a “prophet” among the Delawares, 
calling on all his race to purge itself of foreign in- 
fluences and to unite to drive the white man from 
the land. 

Protests against English encroachments were 
. frequent and, though respectful, none ‘the less em- 
phatic. At a conference in Philadelphia in 1761, 
an Iroquois sachem declared, “‘We, your Brethren, 
of the several Nations, are penned up like Hoggs. 
There are Forts all around us, and therefore we are 
apprehensive that Death is coming upon us. aie ke 
are now left in Peace,” ran a petition of some 
Christian Oneidas addressed to Sir William John- 
son, “and have nothing to do but to plant our 
Corn, Hunt the wild Beasts, smoke our Pipes, and 
mind Religion. But as these Forts, which are built 
among us, disturb our Peace, and are a great hurt 
to Religion, because some of our Warriors are © 


PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY 9 


foolish, and some of our Brother Soldiers don’t fear 
God, we therefore desire that these Forts may be 
- pull’d down, and kick’d out of the way.” 

The leadership of the great revolt that was im- 
pending fell naturally upon_Pontiac, who, since 
the coming of the English, had established himself 
with his squaws and children on a wooded island in 
Lake St. Clair, barely out of view of the fortifica- ~ 

' “tions of Detroit. In all Indian annals no name 
is more illustrious than Pontiac’s; no figure more 
forcefully displays the good and bad qualities of his 
race. Principal chief of the Ottawa tribe, he was 
also by 1763 the head of a powerful confederation 
of Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomi, and a leader 
known and respected among Algonquin peoples 
from the sources of the Ohio to the Mississippi. 
While capable of acts of magnanimity, he had 
an ambition of Napoleonic proportions, and to at- 
tain his ends he was prepared to use any means. 
More clearly than most of his forest contempora- 
ries, he perceived that in the life of the Indian 
people a crisis had come. He saw that, unless the 
tide of English invasion was rolled back at once, 
all would be lost. The colonial farmers would 
push in after the soldiers; the forests would be cut 
away; the hunting-grounds would be destroyed; 


- 


10 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


the native population would be driven away or 
enslaved. In thesilence of his wigwam he thought 
out a plan of action, and by the closing weeks of 
1762 he wasready. Never was plot more shrewdly 
devised and more artfully carried out. 

During the winter of 1762-63 his messengers 
passed stealthily from nation to nation throughout 
the whole western country, bearing the pictured 
wampum belts and the reddened tomahawks 
which symbolized war; and in April, 1763, the 
Lake tribes were summoned to a great council on 
the banks of the Ecorces, below Detroit, where 
Pontiac in person proclaimed the will of the Master 
of Life as revealed to the Delaware prophet, and 
then announced the details of his plan. Every- 
where the appeal met with approval; and not only 
the scores of Algonquin peoples, but also the Seneca 
branch of the Iroquois confederacy and a number 
of tribes on the lower Mississippi, pledged them- 
selves with all solemnity to fulfill their prophet’s 
injunction “to drive the dogs which wear red cloth- 
ing into the sea.” While keen-eyed warriors 
sought to keep up appearances by lounging about 
the forts and begging in their customary manner 
for tobacco, whiskey, and gunpowder, every wig- 
wam and forest hamlet from Niagara to the Missis- 


PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY Il 


sippi was astir. Dusky maidens chanted the tribal 
war-songs, and in the blaze of a hundred camp-fires 
chiefs and warriors performed the savage Bah 
tomime of battle. 

A simultaneous attack, timed by a change of the 
moon, was to be made on the English forts and 
settlements throughout all the western country. 
Every tribe was to fall upon the settlement nearest 
at hand, and afterwards all were to combine — 
with French aid, it was confidently believed — in 
an assault on the seats of English power farther 
east. The honor of destroying the most important 
of the English strongholds, Detroit, was reserved 
for Pontiac himself. 

The date fixed for the rising was the 7th.of May. — 
Six days in advance Pontiac with forty of his war- 
riors appeared at the fort, protested undying 
friendship for the Great Father across the water, 
and insisted on performing the calumet dance 
before the new commandant, Major Gladwyn. 
This aroused no suspicion. But four days later a 
French settler reported that his wife, when visiting 
the Ottawa village to buy venison, had observed 
the men busily filing off the ends of their gun- 
barrels; and the blacksmith at the post recalled 
the fact that the Indians had lately seught to 


12 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


borrow files and saws without being able to give a 
plausible explanation of the use they intended to 
make of the implements. 

The English traveler Jonathan Carver, who 
visited the post five years afterwards, relates that 
an Ottawa girl with whom Major Gladwyn had 
formed an attachment betrayed the plot. Though 
this story is of doubtful authenticity, there is no 
doubt that, in one way or another, the command- 
ant was amply warned that treachery was in the 
air. Thesounds of revelry from the Indian camps, 
the furtive glances of the redskins lounging about 
the settlement, the very tension of the atmosphere, 
would have been enough to put an experienced In- 
dian fighter on his guard. 

Accordingly when, on the fated morning, Pon- 
tiac and sixty redskins, carrying under long blan- 
kets their shortened muskets, appeared before the 
fort and asked admission, they were taken aback VA 
to find the whole garrison under arms. On their 
way from the gate to the council house they were 
obliged to march literally between rows of glitter- 
ing steel. Well might even Pontiac falter. With 
uneasy glances, the party crowded into the council 
room, where Gladwyn and his officers sat waiting. 
“‘Why,” asked the chieftain stolidly, “do I see so 


PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY 13 


many of my father’s young men standing in the 
street with their guns?” ‘‘To keep them in train- 
ing,” was the laconic reply. 

The scene that was planned was then carried. 
out, except in one vital particular. When, in the 
course of his speech professing strong attachment 
to the English, the chieftain came to the point 
where he was to give the signal for slaughter by 
holding forth the wampum belt of peace inverted, 
he presented the emblem — to the accompaniment 
of a significant clash of arms and roll of drums 
from the mustered garrison outside — in the nor- 
mal manner; and after a solemn warning from the 
commandant that vengeance would follow any 
act of aggression, the council broke up. To the 
forest leader’s equivocal announcement that he 
would bring all of his wives and children in a few 
days to shake hands with their English fathers, 
Gladwyn deigned no reply. 

Balked in his plans, the chief retired, but only to 
meditate fresh treachery; and when, a few days 
later, with a multitude of followers, he sought 
admission to the fort to assure “his fathers” that 
“evil birds had sung lies in their ears,” and was 
refused, he called all his forces to arms, threw off his 
disguises, and began hostilities. For six months 


14 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


the settlement was besieged with a persistence 
rarely displayed in Indian warfare. At first the 
French inhabitants encouraged the besiegers, but, 
after it became known that a final peace between 
England and France had been concluded, they 


_ withheld further aid. Throughout the whole pe- 


ee 


_ riod, the English obtained supplies with no great 


difficulty from the neighboring farms. There was 
little actual fighting, and the loss of life was insig- 
nificant. 

By order of General Amherst, the French com- 


\mander still in charge of Fort Chartres sent a mes- 


senger to inform the redskins definitely that no 
assistance from France would be forthcoming. 
*“‘Forget then, my dear children,”” — so ran the ad- 
monition — “‘all evil talks. Leave off from spilling 
the blood of your brethren, the English. Our hearts 
are now but one; you cannot, at present, strike the 
one without having the other for an enemy also.” 
The effect was, as intended, to break the spirit of 


i 


_ the besiegers; and in October Pontiac humbly sued % 


for peace. 

Meanwhile a reign of terror spread over the 
entire frontier. Settlements from Forts Le Boeuf 
and Venango, south of Lake Erie, to Green Bay, 
west of Lake Michigan, were attacked, and ruses 


PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY 15 


similar to that attempted at Detroit were generally 
successful. A few Indiaus in friendly guise would 
approach a fort. After these were admitted, 
others would appear, as if quite by chance. Fi- 
nally, when numbers were sufficient, the conspira- 
tors would draw their concealed weapons, strike 
down the garrison, and begin a general massacre of 
the helpless populace. Scores of pioneer families, 
scattered through the wilderness, were murdered 
and scalped; traders were waylaid in the forest 
solitudes; border towns were burned and planta- 
tions were devastated. In the Ohio Valley every- 
thing was lost except Fort. fort Pitt, formerly Fort 
Duquesne; in the Northwest, everything was taken 
except Detroit. man 

“Fort Pitt was repeatedly endangered, and_ the 
most important engagement of the war was fought 


initsdefense. The relief of the post was entrusted 
in midsummer to a force of five hundred regulars 
lately transferred from the West Indies to Pennsyl- 
vania and placed under the command of Colonel 
Henry Bouquet. The expedition advanced with 
all possible caution, but early in August, 1763, 
when it was yet twenty-five miles from its destina- 
tion, it was ‘set upon by a formidable Indian band 


at Bushy Run and threatened with a fate not un- 
“peer lia 


16 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


like that suffered by Braddock’s little army in the 
same region nine years earlier. Finding the woods 
full of redskins and all retreat cut off, the troops, 
drawn up in a circle around their horses and sup- 
plies, fired with such effect as they could upon the 
shadowy forms in the forest. No water was ob- 
tainable, and in a few hours thirst began to make 
the soldiery unmanageable. Realizing that the 
situation was desperate, Bouquet resorted to a ruse 
by ordering his men to fall back as if in retreat. 
The trick succeeded, and with yells of victory the 
Indians rushed from cover to seize the coveted pro- 
visions — only to be met by a deadly fire and put 


to utter rout. The news of the battle of Bushy” : 


Run spread rapidly through the frontier regions 
and proved very effective in discouraging further 
hostilities. 

It was Bouquet’s intention to press forward at 
once from Fort Pitt into the disturbed Ohio coun- 
try. His losses, however, compelled the postpone- 
ment of this part of the undertaking until the fol- 
lowing year. Before he started off again he built 
at Fort Pitt a blockhouse which still stands, and 
which has been preserved for posterity by becom- 
ing, in 1894, the property of the Pittsburgh chapter 
of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 


| 


7 


ay 


PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY 17 


October, 1764, he set out for the Muskingum valley 
with a force of fifteen hundred regulars, Pennsyl- 
vania and Virginia volunteers, and friendly In- 
dians. By this time the great conspiracy was in ie 
ollapse, and it was a matter of no great difficulty 
eeBanqut to enter into friendly relations with the 
successive tribes, to obtain treaties with them, and 
to procure the release of such English captives as 
’ were still in their hands. By the close of Novem- 
‘ber, 1764, the work was complete, and Bouquet 
was back at Fort Pitt. Pennsylvania and Virginia 
honored him with votes of thanks; the King for- 
mally expressed his gratitude and tendered him 
the military governorship of the newly acquired ~ 
territory of Florida. 

The general pacification of the Northwest was 
accomplished by treaties with the natives in great 
councils held at Niagara, Presqu’ isle (Erie), and 
Detroit. Pontiac had fled to the Maumee country 
“to the west of Lake Erie, whence he still hurled 
his ineffectual threats at the “dogs in red.” His 
power, however, was broken. The most he could 
do was to gather four hundred warriors on the 
Maumee and Illinois and present himself at Fort 
Chartres with a demand for weapons and ammuni- 
tion with which to keep up the war. The French 


18 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


commander, who was now daily awaiting orders to 
turn the fortress over to the English, refused; and a 
deputation dispatched to New Orleans in quest of 
the desired equipment received no reply save that 
New Orleans itself, with all the country west of the 
river, had been ceded to Spain. The futility of 
further resistance on the part of Pontiac was ap- 
parent. In 1765 the disappointed chieftain gave 
pledges of friendship; and in the followimg year 
he and other leaders made a formal submission to 
Sir William Johnson at Oswego, and Pontiac re- 
nounced forever the bold design to make himself at 
a stroke lord of the West and deliverer of his coun- 
try from English domination. 

For three years the movements of this disap- 
pointed Indian leader are uncertain. Most of the 
time, apparently, he dwelt in the Maumee country, 
leading the existence of an ordinary warrior. Then, 
in the spring of 1769, he appeared at the settlements 
on the middle Mississippi. At the newly founded 
French town of St. Louis, on the Spanish side of 
the river, he visited an old friend, the command- 
ant Saint Ange de Bellerive. Thence he crossed to 
Cahokia, where Indian and creole alike welcomed 
him and made him the central figure in a series 
of boisterous festivities. 


va 


PONTIAC’S CONSPIRACY 19 


An English trader in the village, observing jeal- 
- ously the honors that were paid the visitor, resolved 
that an old score should forthwith be evened up. 
A Kaskaskian redskin was bribed, with a barrel of 
liquor and with promises of further reward, to put 
the fallen leader out of the way; and the bargain 
was hardly sealed before the deed was done. Steal- 
Ing upon his victim as he walked in the neighboring 
- forest, the assassin buried a tomahawk in his brain, 
and “thus basely,”’ in the words of Parkman, “per- 
ished the champion of a ruined race.” Claimed 
by Saint-Ange, the body was borne across the river 
and buried with military honors near the new Fort 
St. Louis. The site of Pontiac’s grave was soon 
forgotten, and today the people of a great city 
trample over and about it without heed. 


a” 


CHAPTER II 
**4 LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, who was in London in 1760 as 
agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly, gave the Brit- 
ish ministers some wholesome advice on the terms 
of the peace that should be made with France. The 
St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes regions, he said, 
must be retained by England at all costs. More- 
over, the Mississippi Valley must be taken, in order 
to provide for the growing populations of the sea- 
board colonies suitable lands in the interior, and 
so keep them engaged in agriculture. Otherwise 
these populations would turn to manufacturing, 
and the industries of the mother country would 
suffer. 

The treaty of peace, three years later, brought 
the settlement which Franklin suggested. The vast 


American back country, with its inviting rivers 
and lakes, its shaded hills, and its sunny prairies,” 


became English territory. The English people had, 
20 


4 


“A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 21 


however, only the vaguest notion of the extent, 
appearance, and resources of their new possession. 
Even the officials who drew the treaty were as ig- 
norant of the country as of middle Africa. Prior 
to the outbreak of the war no widely known Eng- 
lish writer had tried to describe it; and the absorb- 
ing French books of Lahontan, Hennepin, and 
Charlevoix had reached but a small circle. The 
' prolonged conflict in America naturally stimulated 
interest in the new country. The place-names of 
the upper Ohio became household words, and en- 
terprising publishers put out not only translations 


of the French writers but compilations by English- ~ 


men designed, in true journalistic fashion, to meet 
the demands of the hour for information. 

These publications displayed amazing miscon- 
ceptions of the lands described. They neither es- 
timated aright the number and strength of the 
French settlements nor dispelled the idea that the 
western country was of little value. Even the most 
brilliant Englishman of the day, Dr. Samuel John- 

‘son, an ardent defender of the treaty of 1763, wrote 
that the large tracts of America added by the war 
to the British dominions were “only the barren 
parts of the continent, the refuse of the earlier ad- 
venturers, which the French, who came last, had 


i 


22 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


taken only as better than nothing.” As late indeed 
as 1789, William Knox, long Under-Secretary for 
the Colonies, declared that Americans could not 
settle the western territory “for ages, ” and that the 
region must be given up to barbarism like the plains 
of Asia, with a population as unstable as the Sey- 
thians and Tartars. But the shortsightedness of 
these distant critics can be forgiven when one re- 
calls that Franklin himself, while conjuring up a 
splendid vision of the western valleys teeming with 
a thriving population, supposed that the dream 
would not be realized for “‘some centuries.”” None 
of these observers dreamt that the territories trans- 
ferred in 1763 would have within seventy-five : 
years a population almost equal to that of Great 
Britain. 

The ink with which the Treaty of Paris was 
signed was hardly dry before the King and his 
ministers were confronted with the task of provid- 
ing government for the new possessions and of solv- 
ing problems of land tenure and trade. Still more 
imperative were measures to conciliate the Indians; 
for already Pontiac’s rebellion had been in progress , 
four months, and the entire back country was 
aflame. It must be confessed that a continental 
wilderness swarming with murderous savages was 


A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 23 


an inheritance whose aspect was by no means alto- 


gether pleasing to the English mind. 

The easiest solution of the difficulty was to let 
things 3 take e their c course. “Let_seaboard popula- 
tions ‘spread at will over the new lands; let them 
calty” on trade in their own way, and make what- 
ever arrangements with the native tribes they de- 
sire. Colonies such as Virginia and New York, 
‘ which had extensive western claims, would have 
been glad to see this plan adopted. Strong objec- 
tions, however, were raised. Colonies which had 
no western.claims feared the effects of the advan- 
tages which their more fortunate neighbors would 
enjoy. Men who had invested heavily in lands 
lying west of the mountains felt that their returns 
would be diminished and delayed if the back coun- 
try were thrown open to settlers. Some people 
thought that the Indians had a moral right to pro- 
tection against wholesale white invasion of their 
hunting-grounds, and many considered it expedi- 
ent, at all events, to offer such protection. 

After all, however, it was the King and his min- 
isters who had it in their power to settle the ques- 


4 


tion; and from their point of view it was desirable / 


to keep the western territories as much as possi- 
ble apart from the older colonies, and to regulate, 


| 


2A THE OLD NORTHWEST 


with farsighted policy, their settlement and trade. 
Eventually, it was believed, the territories would 
be cut into new colonies; and experience with the 
seaboard dependencies was already such as to sug- 
gest the desirability of having the future settle- 
ments more completely under government control © 
from the beginning. 

After due consideration, King George and his 


ministers made known their policy on October 7, _- 


1763, ina comprehensive proclamation. The first 
“subject dealt with was government. Four new 


pees — “Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, 


and Grenada”’* “were set up in the ceded terri- 


| tories, and their populations were guaranteed all 


| | the rights and privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants 
_ of the older colonies. The Mississippi Valley, how- 


ever, was included in no one of these provinces; 
and, curiously, there was no provision whatever for 
the government of the French settlements lying 


* The Proclamation of 1763 irew the boundaries of “four distinct 
and separate governments.” Grenada was to include the island of 
that name, together with the Grenadines, Dominico, St. Vincent, and 
Tobago. The Floridas lay south. of the bounds of Georgia and east 
of the Mississippi River. The Apalachicola River was to be the 
“dividing line between East and West Florida. Quebec included the 
modern province of that name and that part of Ontario lying north 
of a line drawn from Lake Nipissing to the point where the forty-fifth 
parallel intersects the St. Lawrence River. 


“A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 25 


within it. The number and size of these settle- 
ments were underestimated, and apparently it was 
supposed that all the habitants and soldiers would 
avail themselves of their privilege of withdrawing 
from the ceded territories. 

The disposition made of the great rectangular 
area bounded by the Alleghanies, the Mississippi, 
the Lakes, and the Gulf, was fairly startling. With 
. fine disregard of the chartered claims of the sea- 
board colonies and of the rights of pioneers already 
settled on frontier farms, the whole was erected into 

an Indian reserve. No “loving subject”? might 
pathases Tend Oats in the territory without 
special license; present residents should “forthwith 
remove themselves’ >; trade should be carried on 
only by permit and under close surveillance; offi- 
cers were to be stationed among the tribes to pre- 
serve friendly relations and to apprehend fugitives 
from colonial justice. 

The objects of this drastic scheme were never 
clearly stated. Franklin believed that the main 


purpose was to conciliate the Indians. Washing- / 


ton agreed with him. Later historians have gener- 
ally thought that what the English Government 
had chiefly in mind was to limit the bounds of the 
seaboard colonies, with a view to preserving im- 


ws 


96’ ‘THE OLD NORTHWEST 


perial control over colonial affairs. Very likely 
both of these motives weighed heavily in the de- 
cision. At all events, Lord Hillsborough, who pre- 
sided over the meetings ‘of the Lords of Trade when 
the proclamation was discussed, subsequently / 
wrote that the “capital object” of the Govern- 
ment’s policy was to confine-the colonies so that 
they should be kept in easy reach of British trade 
and of the authority necessary to keep them in due 
subordination to the mother country, and he added 
that the extension of the fur trade depended “en- 
tirely upon the Indians being undisturbed in the 
possession of their hunting-grounds.”’? 

It does not follow that the King and his advisers 
intended that the territory should be kept forever / 
intact as a forest preserve. They seem to have 
contemplated that, from time to time, cessions 
would be secured from the Indians and tracts 
would be opened for settlement. But every move 
was to be made in accordance with plans formu- 
lated or authorized in England. The restrictive 
policy won by no means universal assent in the 
mother country. The Whigs generally opposed it, 


But as Lord Hillsborough had just taken office and adopted 
bodily a policy formulated by his. predecessor, he is none too good 
an authority. See Alvord’s Mississippi Valley in British Politics, 
vol. 1, pp. 203-4. 


“A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 27 


and Burke thundered against it as “an attempt to 
keep as a lair of wild beasts that earth which God, 
by an express charter, has given to the children of 


” 


men. 


1 


In America there was a disposition to take the 
proclamation lightly as being a mere sop to the 
Indians. But wherever it was regarded seriously, 
it was hotly resented. After passing through an 

. NG TTS 
_ arduous war, the colonists were ready to enter upon 


a new w expansive era. The western territories were 
theirs rs by charter, by eerlewcat. and by conquest. 
The Indian population, they believed, belonged to 
the unprogressive and unproductive peoples of the 
earth. Every acre of fertile soil in America called 
to the thrifty agriculturist; every westward flow- 
ing river invited to trade and settlement — as well, 
therefore, seek to keep back the ocean with a broom 
as to stop by mere decree the tide of homeseekers. 
Some of the colonies made honest attempts to com- 
pel the removal of settlers from the reserved lands 
beyond their borders, and Pennsylvania went so far 
as to decree the death penalty for all who should 
refuse toremove. But the law was never enforced. 


The news of the cession of the eastern bank of the 
Mississippi to the English brought consternation to 


28 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


the two or three thousand French people living in 
the settlements of the Kaskaskia, Illinois, and Wa- 
bash regions. The transfer of the western bank to 
Spain did not become known promptly, and for 
months the habitants supposed that by taking up 
their abode on the opposite side of the stream they 
would continue under their own flag. \ Many of 
them crossed the Mississippi to find new abodes ~ 
even after it was announced that the land had 
passed to Spain. 

From first to last these settlements on the 
Mississippi, the Wabash, and the Illinois had re- 
mained, in French hands, mere sprawling villages. 
The largest of them, Kaskaskia, may have con- 
tained in its most flourishing days two thousand 
people, many of them voyageurs, coureurs-de-bois, 
converted Indians, and ae of one sort or 
another. In 1765 there were not above seventy 
permanent families. Few of the towns, indeed, 
attained a population of more than two or three 
hundred. All French colonial enterprise had been 
based on the assumption that settlers would be 
few. The trader preferred it so, because settle- 
ments meant restrictions upon his traffic. The 
Jesuit was of the same mind, because such settle- 
ments broke up his mission field. The Government 


“A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 29 


at Paris forbade the emigration of the one class of 
people that cared to emigrate, the Huguenots. 

Though some of the settlements had picturesque 
sites and others drew distinction from their for- 
tifications, in general they presented a drab ap- if 
pearance. - There were usually two or three long, 
narrow streets, with no paving, and often knee- 
deep with mud. The houses were built on either 
_ side, at intervals sufficient to give space for yards 
and garden plots, each homestead being enclosed 
with a crude picket fence. Wood and thatch were 
the commonest building materials, although stone 
"was sometimes used; and the houses were regularly 
one story high, with large vine-covered verandas. 
Land was abundant and cheap. Every enterpris- 
ing settler had a plot for himself, and as a rule 
one large field, or more, was held for use in com- 
mon. In these, the operations of ploughing, sow- 
ing, and reaping were carefully regulated by pub- 
lic ordinance. Occasionally a village drew some 
distinction from the proximity of a large, well- 
managed estate, such as that of the opulent M. / 
Beauvais of Kaskaskia, in whose mill and brewery 
more than eighty slaves were employed. 

Agriculture was carried on somewhat exten- _ 
sively, and it is recorded that, in the year 1746 


30 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


alone, when there was a shortage of foodstuffs at 
New Orleans, the Illinois settlers were able to send 
thither “upward of eight hundred thousand weight 
4 flour. ”’ plete = trading, eatieds con- 


sugar, indigo, pact and other lusarins which the 
people were able to import directly from Europe 
were paid for mainly with consignments of furs, 


hides, tallow, and beeswax. Money was practi- 


cally unknown in the settlements, so. that domes- #1 


tic trade likewise took the form of simple barter. 
Periods of industry and prosperity alternated with 
periods of depression, and the easy-going habitants 
— “farmers, hunters, traders by turn, with a 
strong admixture of unprogressive Indian blood”’ 
— tended always to relapse into utter indolence. 
Some of these French ‘towns, however, were seats 
of culture; and none was wholly barren of diver- 
sions. Kaskaskia had a Jesuit college and likewise 
a monastery. “Cahokia had a school for Indian 
aaa Fort Chartres, we are gravely told, was 


“the center of life and fashion in the West.” If “ 


everyday existence was humdrum, the villagers 
had always the opportunity for voluble conversa- 
tion “each from his own balcony’’; and there were 
scores of Church festivals, not to mention birth- 


«A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 31 


days, visits of travelers or neighbors, and home- 
comings of hunters and traders, which invited to 
festivity. Balls and dances and other merry- 
makings at which the whole village assembled sup- 
plied the wants of a people proverbially fond of 
amusement. Indeed, French civilization in the 
Mississippi and Illinois country was by no means 
without charm. 
Kaskaskia, in the wonderfully fertile “ American 
Bottom,” maintained its existence, in spite of the 
“cession to the English, as did also Vincennes far- 
ther east on the Wabash. Fort Chartres, a stout 
fortification whose walls were more than two feet 
thick, remained the seat of the principal garrison, 
and some traces of French occupancy survived 
on the Illinois. Cahokia was deserted, save for 
the splendid mission-farm of St. Sulpice, with its 
thirty slaves, its herd of cattle, and its mill, which 
the fathers before returning to France sold to a 
thrifty F renchman not averse to becoming an Eng- 
lish subject. A few posts were abandoned alto- 
gether. Some of the departing inhabitants went 
back to France; some followed the French com- _ 
mandant, Neyon de Villiers, down the river to New 
Orleans; many gathered up their possessions, even 
to the frames and clapboards of their houses, and 


32 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


took refuge in the new towns which sprang up on 
the western bank. One of these new settlements 
was Ste. Geneviéve, strategically located near the 
lead mines from which the entire region had long 
drawn its supplies of shot. Another, which was 
destined to greater importance, was St. Louis, 
established as a trading post on the richly wooded 
bluffs opposite Cahokia by Pierre Lacléde in 1764. 

Associated with Lacléde in his fur-trading opera- 
tions at the new post was a lithe young man named 
_Pierre Chouteau. In 1846 — eighty-two years af- 
terwards — Francis Parkman sat on the spacious 
veranda of Pierre Chouteau’s country house near 
the city of St. Louis and heard from the lips of the 
venerable merchant stories of Pontiac, Saint-Ange, 
Croghan, and all the western worthies, red and 
white, of two full generations. ‘Not all the magic 
of a dream,”’ the historian remarks, “‘nor the en- 
chantments of an Arabian tale, could outmatch the 
waking realities which were to rise upon the vision 
of Pierre Chouteau. Where, in his youth, he had 
climbed the woody bluff, and looked abroad on 


a“ 


prairies dotted with bison, he saw, with the dim 


eye of his old age, the land darkened for many a ‘ 


furlong with the clustered roofs of the western 
metropolis. For the silence of the wilderness, he 


“A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 33 


heard the clang and turmoil of human labor, the 
din of congregated thousands; and where the great 
river rolls down through the forest, in lonely gran- 
deur, he saw the waters lashed into foam beneath 
the prows of panting steamboats, flocking to the 
broad levee.” 

Pontiac’: s war long kept the English from taking 
actual possession of the western country. Mean- 
_ while Saint-Ange, commanding the remnant of the 
French garrison at Fort Chartres, resisted as best 
he could the demands of the redskins for assistance 
against their common enemy and hoped daily for 
the appearance of an English force to relieve him 
of his difficult position. In the spring of 1764 an 
English officer, Major Loftus, with a body of 
troops lately employed in planting English au- 
thority in “East Florida” and “West Florida,” 
set out from New Orleans to take possession of the 
up-river settlements. A few miles above the 
mouth of the Red, however, the boats were fired 
on, without warning, from both banks of the 
stream, and many of the men were killed or 
-wounded. The expedition retreated down the 
river with all possible speed. This display of 
faintheartedness won the keen ridicule of the 
French, and the Governor, D’Abadie, with mock 


3 — 


34 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


magnanimity, offered an escort of French soldiery 
to protect the party on its way back to Pensacola! 
Within a few months a second attempt was pro- 
jected, but news of the bad temper of the Indians 
caused the leader, Captain Pittman, to turn back 
after reaching New Orleans. 

Baffled in this direction, the new commander- 
in-chief, General Gage, resolved to accomplish 
the desired end by an expedition from Fort Pitt. 
Pontiac, however, was known to be still plotting 
vengeance at that time, and it seemed advisable 
to break the way for the proposed expedition by a 
special mission to placate the Indians. For this 
delicate task Sir William Johnson selected a trader 
of long experience and of good standing among the 
western tribes, George Croghan. Notwithstand-~ 
ing many mishaps, the plan was ‘carried out. With 
two boats and a considerable party of soldiers and 
friendly Delawares, Croghan left Fort Pitt in May, 
1765. As he descended the Ohio he carefully 
plotted the river’s windings and wrote out an inter- 
esting description of the fauna and flora observed. 
Ail went well until he reached the mouth of the 
Wabash. There the party was set upon by a band 
of Kickapoos, who killed half a dozen of his men. 
Fluent apologies were at once offered. They had 


“A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 35 


made the attack, they explained, only because the 
French had reported that the Indians with Cro- 
ghan’s band were Cherokees, the Kickapoos’ most 
deadly enemies. Now that their mistake was 
apparent, the artful emissaries declared, their re- 
gret was indeed deep. 

All of this was sheer pretense, and Croghan and 
his surviving followers were kept under close guard 
. and were carried along with the Kickapoo band up 
the Wabash to Vincennes, where the trader en- 
countered old Indian friends who soundly rebuked 
the captors for their inhospitality. Croghan knew 
the Indian nature too well to attempt to thwart the 
plans of his “hosts.” Accordingly he went on 
with the band to the upper Wabash post Ouiatanon, 
where he received deputation after deputation 
from the neighboring tribes, smoked pipes of peace, 
made speeches, and shook hands with greasy war- 
riors by the score. Here came a messenger from 
Saint-Ange asking him to proceed to Fort Chartres, 
Here, also, Pontiac met him, and, after being as- 
sured that the English had no intention of enslav- 
ing the natives, declared that he would no longer 
stand in the conquerors’ path. Though in unex- 
pected manner, Croghan’s mission was accom- 
plished, and, with many evidences of favor from 


36 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


the natives, he went on to Detroit and thence to 
Niagara, where he reported to Johnson that the 


situation in the West was ripe for the establishment } 


of English sovereignty. 
There was no reason for further delay, and Cap- 


tain Thomas Sterling was dispatched with a hun-~ 


dred Highland veterans to take over the settle- 
ments. Descending the Ohio from Fort Pitt, the 
expedition reached Fort Chartres just as the frosty 
air began to presage the coming of winter. On 
October_10,_ 1765,— more than two and a half 
years after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, — 
Saint-Ange made the long-desired transfer of au- 
thority. General Gage’s high-sounding proclama- 
tion was read, the British flag was run up, and 
Sterling’s red-coated soldiery established itself in 
the citadel. In due time small detachments were 
sent to Vincennes and other posts; and the triumph 
of the British power over Frenchman and Indian 
was complete. Saint-Ange retired with his little 
garrison to St. Louis, where, until the arrival of a 
Spanish lieutenant-governor in 1770, he acted by 
common consent as chief magistrate. 

The creoles who passed under the English flag 
suffered little from the change. Their property 
and trading interests were not molested, and the 


> 


“A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 37 


English commandants made no effort to displace 
the old laws and usages. Documents were written 
and records were kept in French as well as English. ~ 
The village priest and the notary retained their 
accustomed places of paternal authority. The old 
idyllic life went on. Population increased but 
little; barter, hunting, and trapping still furnished 
the means of a simple subsistence; and with music, 
. dancing, and holiday festivities the light-hearted 
populace managed to crowd more pleasure into a 
year than the average English frontiersman got 
in a lifetime. 

For a year or two after the European pacification 
of 1763 Indian disturbances held back the flood of 
settlers preparing to enter, through the Alleghany 
passes, the upper valleys of the westward flowing 
rivers. Neither Indian depredations nor proclama- 
tions of kings, however, could long interpose an 
effectual restraint. The supreme object of the | 
settlers was to obtain land. Formerly there was 
land enough for all along the coasts or in the nearer 
uplands. But population, as Franklin computed, 
was doubling in twenty-five years; vacant areas 
had already been occupied; and desirable lands 
had been gathered into great speculative holdings. 
Newcomers were consequently forced to cross the 


Smt 2 5 eS ere 


38 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


mountains — and not only newcomers, but all 
residents who were still land-hungry and ambi- 
tious to better their condition. 

To such the appeal of the great West was irre- 
sistible. The English Government might indeed 
regard the region as a “‘barren waste” ora “profit: 
less wilderness,” but not so the Scotch-Irish, 
Huguenot, and Palatine homeseekers_who-poured__ 
by the thousands through the Chesapeake and 
Delaware ports. Pushing past the settled sea- 
board country, these rugged men of adventure 
| plunged joyously into the forest depths and became 
no less the founders of the coming nation than were 
the Pilgrims and the Cavaliers. 

Ahead of the home-builder, however, went the 
speculator. It has been remarked that “from the 
time when Joliet and La Salle first found their way 
into the heart of the great West up to the present 
day when far-off Alaska is in the throes of develop- 
ment, ‘ big business’ has been engaged in western 
speculation.” In pre-revolutionary days this 
| speculation took the form of procuring, by grant or 
purchase, large tracts of western land which were 
to be sold and colonized at a profit. Franklin was 
interested in a number of such projects. Washing- 


t Alvord, Mississippi Valleys in British Politics, vol. 1, p. 86. 


“A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS” 39 


ton, the Lees, and a number of other prominent 
Virginians were connected with an enterprise which 
absorbed the old Ohio Company; and in 1770 
Washington, piloted by Croghan, visited the Ohio 
country with a view to the discovery of desirable 
areas. Eventually he acquired western holdings 
amounting to thirty-three thousand acres, with a 
water-front of sixteen miles on the Ohio and of 
- forty miles on the Great Kanawha. 
In 1773 a company promoted by Samuel Whar- 
ton, Benjamin Franklin, William Johnson, and a 
London banker, Thomas Walpole, secured the 
grant of two and a half million acres between the 
Alleghanies and the Ohio, which was to be the seat 
of a colony called Vandalia. This departure from 
the policy laid down in the Proclamation of 1763 
was made reluctantly, but with a view to giving a 
definite western limit to the seaboard provinces. 
The Government’s purpose was fully understood in 
America, and the project was warmly opposed, 
especially by Virginia, the chartered claimant of 
the territory. The early outbreak of the Revolu- 
tionary War wrecked the project, and nothing ever 
came of it — or indeed of any colonization proposal 


contemporary with it. By and large, the building _ 


of the West was to be the work, not of colonizing 


40 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


companies or other corporate interests, but of in- 
dividual homeseekers, moving into the new coun- 
try on their own responsibility and settling where 
and when their own interests and inclinations led. 


J. 


CHAPTER III 
THE REVOLUTION BEGINS 


One of the grievances given prominence in the 
Declaration of Independence was that the English / 
Crown had “abolished the free system of Eng-. 
lish laws in a neighbouring province, establishing 
therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its 
‘boundaries so as to render it at once an example 
and fit instrument for introducing the same arbi- 
trary rule into these colonies.” The measure 
which was in the minds of the signers was the | 
Quebec Act of 17 74; and the feature to which they ~ 
especially objected was the extension of this pecu- 

/ liarly governed Canadian province to include the 

\ whole of the territory north of the Ohio and east of ~~ 

-\the Mississippi. 

The Quebec Act was passed primarily to remedy | 

a curious mistake made by King George’s ministers \ 
eleven years earlier. The Proclamation of 1763.” 


had been intended to apply to the new French- 
41 


42 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


speaking possessions in only a general way, leaving 
matters of government and law to be regulated at 
a later date. But through oversight it ordained 
the establishment of English law, and even of a 
representative assembly, precisely as in the other 
new provinces. The English governors were thus 
put in an awkward position. They were required 
, to introduce English political forms and legal 
practices. (Yet the inexperience and suspicion of 
the people made it unwise, if not impossible, to do 
so) ~ When, for example, jury trial was broached, 
the peasants professed to be quite unable to un- 
derstand why the English should prefer to have 
matters of law decided by tailors and shoemakers 
rather than by a judge; and as for a legislature, 
they frankly confessed that assemblies “had drawn 
upon other colonies so much distress, and had oe- 
casioned so much riot and hes that they 
had hoped never to have one.’ 

The Act of 1774 relieved the siaaeian lee restor- | 
ing Bieneh law in civil affairs, abolishing jury trial | : 
except in criminal cases, rescinding the grant of 
representative government, and confirming the 
Catholic clergy in the rights and privileges which 
they had enjoyed under the old régime/ This 
would have aroused no great amount of ing 


THE REVOLUTION BEGINS 43 


among New Englanders and Virginians if the new 
arrangements had been confined to the bounds of 
the original province.| But they were not so re- 
stricted. On the contrary, the new province was 
made to include the great region between the 
Alleghanies and the Mississippi, southward to the, 
Ohio; and it was freely charged that a principa 
object of the English Government was to seve 
the West from the shore colonies and perma 
nently link it with the St. Lawrence Valley rath 
than with the Atlantic slope. 

At all events, the Quebec Act marked the be- 
ginning of civil ‘government in the great. North-. 
west. On November 9, 1775, Henry Hamilton ap- 
~~ peared as Lieutenant- Governor at the new capital, 
Detroit. > Already the “shot heard round the 
world” had been fired by the farmers at Lexington; ~ 
and Hamilton ‘had been obliged to thread his way 


through General Montgomery’s lines about Mont- 
real in the guise of a Canadian. Arrived at his 
new seat of authority, he found a pleasant, freshly 
fortified town whose white population had grown 
to fifteen hundred, including a considerable num- 
ber of English-speaking settlers. The country 
round was overrun with traders, who cheated and 
cajoled the Indians without conscience; the na- 


44 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


tives, in turn, were a nondescript lot, showing in 
pitiful manner the bad effects of their contact 
with the whites. 

As related by a contemporary chronicler — a 
Pennsylvanian who lived for years among the 
western tribes —an Indian hunting party on ar- 
riving at Detroit would trade perhaps a third of 
the peltries which they brought in for fine clothes, 
ammunition, paint, tobacco, and like articles. 
Then a keg of brandy would be purchased; and a 
council would be held to decide who was to get 
drunk and who to keep sober. All arms and clubs 
were taken away and hidden, and the orgy would 
begin. It was the task of those who kept sober to 
prevent the drunken ones from killing one another, 
a task always hazardous and frequently unsuccess- 
ful, sometimes as many as five being killed in a 
night. When the keg was empty, brandy was 
brought by the kettleful and ladled out with large 
wooden spoons; and this was kept up until the 
last skin had been disposed of. Then, dejected, 
wounded, lamed, with their fine new shirts torn, 
their blankets burned, and with nothing but their 
ammunition and tobacco saved, they would start 
off down the.river to hunt in the Ohio country 
and begin again the same round of alternating toil 


THE REVOLUTION BEGINS 45 


and debauchery. In the history of the country 
there is hardly a more depressing chapter than 
that which records the easy descent of the red man, 
once his taste for “fire water’? was developed, to 
bestiality and impotence. 

The coming on of the Revolution produced no 
immediate effects in the West. The meaning of 
the occurrences round Boston was but slowly 
grasped by the frontier folk. There was little 
indeed that the Westerners could do to help the 
cause of the eastern patriots, and most of them, 
if left alone, would have been only distant specta- 


tors of the conflict. But orders given to the 
British agents and commanders called for the | 
ravaging of the trans-Alleghany country; and as | 
a consequence the West became an important 


theater of hostilities. 

_ The British agents had no troops with which to 
undertake military operations on a considerable 
scale, but they had one great resource — the In=) * 
dians — and this they used with a reckless di dis- 


regard of all considerations of humanity. In the | 


summer of 1776 the Cherokees were furnished 
with fifty horse-loads of ammunition and were 
turned loose upon the back country of Georgia and 


the Carolinas. Other tribes were prompted to | 


/ 
Z 


46 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


depredations farther north. White, half-breed, 
and Indian agents went through the forests inci- 
ting the natives to deeds of horror; prices were fixed 
on scalps — and it is significant of the temper of 

\ these agents that a woman’s scalp was paid for as 
readily as a man’s. 


A 


In every corner of the wilderness the bloody 
scenes of Pontiac’s war were now reénacted. 
Bands of savages lurked about the settlements, 
ready to attack at any unguarded moment; and 
wherever the thin blue smoke of a settler’s cabin 
rose, prowlers lay in wait. A woman might not | 
safely go a hundred yards to milk a cow, or a man, " 
lead a horse to water. The farmer carried a gun \/ 
strapped to his side as he ploughed, and he scarcely 
dared venture into the woods for the winter’s 
supply of fuel and game. Hardly a day passed 
on which a riderless horse did not come galloping 
into some lonely clearing, telling of a fresh tragedy 
on the trail. 

The rousing of the Indians against the frontiers- 
men was an odious act. The people of the back 
country were in not the slightest degree responsible 
for the revolt against British authority in the East. 
They were non-combatants, and no amount of 
success in sweeping them from their homes could 


THE REVOLUTION BEGINS 47 


affect the larger outcome. The crowning villainy of 
this shameful policy was the turning of the redskins 
loose to prey upon helpless women and children. 
The responsibility for this inhumanity must be 
borne in some degree by the government of George 
Ill. “God and nature,” wrote the Earl of Suffolk 
piously, “hath put into our hands the scalping- 
knife and tomahawk, to torture them into uncon- 
ditional submission.”” But the fault lay chiefly 
with the British officers at the western posts — 
most of all, with Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton . 
at Detroit. Probably no British representative 
in America was on better terms with the natives. 
He drank with them, sang war-songs with them, 
and received them with open arms when they came 
in from the forests with the scalps of white men 
dangling at their belts. A great council on the 
banks of the Detroit in June, 1778, was duly 
opened with prayer, after which Hamilton ha- 
rangued the assembled Chippewas, Hurons, Mo- 
hawks, and Potawatomi on their “‘duties”’ in the 
war and congratulated them on the increasing 
numbers of their prisoners and scalps, and then 
urged them to redoubled activity by holding out 
the prospect of the complete expulsion of white 
men from the great interior hunting-grounds. 


48 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


Scarcely were the deputations attending this 
council well on their way homewards when a 
courier arrived from the Illinois country bringing 
startling news. The story was that a band of three 


hundred rebels led by one George Rogers Clark - 


had fallen upon the Kaskaskia settlements, had 
thrown the commandant into irons, and had ex- 
acted from the populace an oath of allegiance to 
the Continental Congress. It was reported, too, 
that Cahokia had been taken, and that, even as 
the messenger was leaving Kaskaskia, “Gibault, a 
French priest, had his horse ready saddled to go 
to Vincennes to receive the submission of the 
inhabitants in the name of the rebels.” 


J 


George Rogers Clark was a Virginian, born in / 


the foothills of Albemarle County three years — 


before Braddock’s defeat. His family was not of 
the landed gentry, but he received some educa- 
tion, and then, like Washington and many other 
adventuresome young men of the day, became a 
surveyor. At the age of twenty-two he was a 
member of Governor Dunmore’s staff. During a 
surveying expedition he visited Kentucky, which 
so pleased him that in 1774 he decided to make 
that part of the back country his home. He was 
even then a man of powerful frame, with broad 


THE REVOLUTION BEGINS 49 


brow, keen blue eyes, and a dash of red in his hair 
from a Scottish ancestress — a man, too, of ardent 
patriotism, strong common sense, and exceptional 
powers of initiative and leadership. Small wonder 
that in the rapidly developing commonwealth be- 
yond the mountains he quickly became a domi- 
nating spirit. 

With a view to organizing a civil government 
and impressing upon the Virginia authorities the 
need of defending the western settlements, the ~ 
men of Kentucky held a convention at Harrods- 
burg in the spring of 1775 and elected two delegates - 
to present their petition to the Virginia . Assembly. 
Clark was one of them. The journey to Williams- © 
‘burg was long and arduous, and the delegates 
arrived only to find that the Legislature had ad- 
journed. The visit, none the less, gave Clark an 
opportunity to explain to the new Governor — “a 
- certain Patrick Henry, of Hanover County,” | 
the royalist J Dunmore contemptuously styled ‘a 
successor — the situation in the back country and 
to obtain five hundred pounds of powder. He also 
induced the authorities to take steps which led to 
the definite organization of Kentucky as a county 
of Virginia. 

In the bloody days that followed, most of the 


4 


50 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


pioneers saw nothing to be done except to keep 
close guard and beat off the Indians when they 
came. A year or two of that sort of desperate 
uncertainty gave Clark an idea. Why not meet 
the trouble at its source by capturing the British 
posts and suppressing the commandants whose 
orders were mainly responsible for the atrocities? 
There was just one obstacle: Kentucky could spare / 
neither men nor money for the undertaking. 

In the spring of 1777 two young hunters, dis- 
guised as traders, were dispatched to the Illinois 
country and to the neighborhood of Vincennes, to 
spy out the land. They brought back word that 
the posts were not heavily manned, and that the 
French-speaking population took little interest in 
the war and was far from reconciled to British rule. 
The prospect seemed favorable. Without making 
his purpose known to anyone, Clark forthwith 
joined a band of disheartened settlers and made his 
way with them over the Wilderness Trail to Vir- 
ginia. By this timea plan on the part of the rebels 
for the defense of the Kentucky settlements had 
grown into a scheme for the conquest of the whole 
Northwest. 

Clark’s proposal came opportunely. Burgoyne’s 
surrender had given the colonial cause a rosy hue, 


THE REVOLUTION BEGINS 51 


and already the question of the occupation of the 
Northwest had come up for discussion in Con- 
gress. Governor Henry thought well of the plan. 
He called Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and 
George Wythe into conference, and on January 
2, 1778, Clark was given two sets of orders — one, 
for publication, commissioning him to raise seven 
_ companies of fifty men each “in any county of the 
_ Commonwealth” for militia duty in Kentucky, 
the_ other, secret, authorizing him to use this force 
in an expedition for the capture of the “Brit-_ 
_ish_post_at- Kaskasky.” To meet the costs, dake 
twelve hundred pounds in depreciated continental 


currency could be raised. But the Governor and 


his friends promised to try to secure three hundred 
acres of land for each soldier, in case the project_ 
should succeed. The strictest secrecy was pre- 
served, and, even if the Legislature had been in 
session, the project would probably not have been 
divulged to it. 

Men and supplies were gathered at Fort Pitt 
and Wheeling and were carried down the Ohio to 
“the Falls,” opposite the site of Louisville. The 
real object of the expedition was concealed until 
this point was reached. On learning of the project, 
the men were surprised, and some refused to go 


52 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


farther. But in a few weeks one hundred aod 
seventy-five men, organized in “four companies, 
“Were in readiness. The start was made on the 
24th of June. Just as the little flotilla of clumsy 
flatboats was caught by the rapid current, the 
landscape was darkened by an eclipse of the sun. 
The superstitious said that this was surely an evil 
omen. But Clark was no believer in omens, and 
he ordered the bateaux to proceed. He had lately 
received news of the French alliance, and was 
surer than ever that the habitants would make 
common cause with his forces and give him com- 
plete success. 

To appear on the Mississippi was to run the 
risk of betraying the object of the expedition to the 
defenders of the posts. Hence the wily commander 
decided to make the last stages of his advance by 
an pe cand de At the deserted site of Fort 
“see, the little army left the Ohio and struck off 
northwest on a march of one hundred and twenty 
miles, as the crow flies, across the tangled forests 
and rich prairies of southern Illinois. 

Six days brought the invaders to the Kaskaskia _ 
River, three miles above the principal settlement. 
Stealing silently along the bank of the stream on 


THE REVOLUTION BEGINS 53 


the night of the 4th of July, they crossed in boats 
which they seized at a farmhouse and arrived at 
the palisades wholly unobserved. Half of the force 
was stationed in the form of a cordon, so that no 
one might escape. The remainder followed Clark 
through an unguarded gateway into the village. 

_ According to a story long current, the officials 
of the post were that night giving a ball, and all of 
- the élite, not of Kaskaskia alone but of the neigh- 
boring settlements as well, were joyously dancing 
in one of the larger rooms of the fort. Leaving 
his men some paces distant, Clark stepped to the 
entrance of the hall, and for some time leaned un- 
observed against the door-post, grimly watching 
the gayety. Suddenly the air was rent by a war- 
whoop which brought the dancers to a stop. An 
Indian brave, lounging in the firelight, had caught 
a glimpse of the tall, gaunt, buff and blue figure 
in the doorway and had recognized it. Women 
shrieked; men cursed; tbe musicians left their 
posts; all was disorder./ Advancing, Clark struck 
a theatrical pose and in a voice of command told 


the merrymakers to go on with their dancing, but 
to take note that they now danced, not as subjects 
of King George but as Virginians. / Finding that 


they were in no mood for further diversion, he 


54 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


sent them to their homes; and all night they shiv- 
ered with fear, daring not so much as to light a 
candle lest they should be set upon and murdered 
in their beds. 

This account is wholly unsupported by contem- 
porary testimony, and it probably sprang from the 
imagination of some good frontier story-teller. It 
contains at least this much truth, that the settle- 
ment, after being thrown into panic, was quickly 
and easily taken. Curiously enough, the com- 
mandant was a Frenchman, Rocheblave, who had / 
thriftily entered the British service. True to the 
trust reposed in him, he protested and threatened, 
but to no avail. The garrison, now much dimin- 
ished, was helpless, and the populace — British, 
French, and Indian alike — was not disposed to 
court disaster by offering armed resistance. Hence, 
on the morning after the capture the oath of fidel- 
ity was administered, and. the American flag was — 
hoisted for the first time within view of the Father 
of Waters. After dispatching word to General 
_ Carleton that he had been compelled to surrender! 
the post to “the self-styled Colonel, Mr. Clark,” 
Rocheblave was sent as a captive to Williamsburg, 
where he soon broke parole and escaped. His 
slaves were sold for five hundred pounds, and the 


THE REVOLUTION BEGINS 55 


money was distributed among the troops. Ca- ~ 
hokia Jhokia was occupied without resistance, and the 
‘French. priest, Father Pierre Gibault, whose parish 
extended from Lake Sup: ‘Superior to the Ohio, volun- 
teered to go to Vincennes and win its inhabitants 
to the American cause. 

Like Kaskaskia and Cahokia, the Wabash 
settlement had been put in charge of a comman- 
dant of French descent. The village, however, 


was at the moment without a garrison, and its 
chief stronghold, Fort Sackville, was untenanted. 
Gibault argued forcefully for acceptance of Ameri- | 
can sovereignty, and within two days the entire | 
population filed into the little church and took the 
oath of allegiance. The astonished Indians were 
given to understand that their former “Great 
Father,” the King of France, had returned to life, 
and that they must comply promptly with his 
wishes or incur his everlasting wrath for having 
given aid to the despised British. 

Thus without the firing of a shot or the shedding 
of a drop of blood, the vast Illinois and Wabash A 
country was won for the future United States. 
Clark’s plan was such that its success was assured 
by its very audacity. It never occurred to the 
British authorities that their far western forts 


56 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


were in danger, and they were wholly unprepared 

to fly to the defense of such distant posts. British 

sovereignty on the Mississippi was never recovered; 

and in the autumn of 1778 Virginia took steps to 
| organize her new conquest by setting up the county 
| of Illinois, which included all her territories lying 
| ‘on the western side of the Ohio.” 


\ 
i 


\ 


\ 


CHAPTER IV 
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 


‘LizuTENANT-GovEeRNoR Hamitton had many 
faults, but sloth was not one of them; and when 
he heard what had happened he promptly decided 
to regain the posts and take the upstart Kentucky 
conqueror captive. Emissaries were sent to the 
Wabash country to stir up the Indians, and for 
weeks the Detroit settlement resounded with prep- 
arations for the expedition. Boats were built or 
repaired, guns were cleaned, ammunition was col- 
lected in boxes, provisions were put up in kegs or 
bags, baubles for the Indians were made or pur- 
chased. Cattle and wheels, together with a six- 
pounder, were sent ahead to be in readiness for 
use at various stages of the journey. 

Further weeks were consumed in awaiting re- 
enforcements which never came; and in early 
October, when the wild geese were scudding south- 


ward before the first snow flurries of the coming 
BT 


58 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


winter, the commandant started for the reconquest 
with a motley force of thirty-six British regulars, 
forty-five local volunteers, seventy-nine local mili- 
tia, and sixty Indians. Reénforcements were 
gathered on the road, so that when Vincennes was 
reached the little army numbered about five hun- 
dred. From Detroit the party dropped easily down 

~ the river to Lake Erie, where it narrowly escaped 
destruction in a blinding snowstorm. By good 
management, however, it was brought safely to 
the Maumee, up whose sluggish waters the bateaux 
were laboriously poled. A portage of nine miles 
gave access to the Wabash. Here the water was 
very shallow, and only by building occasional dikes 
to produce a current did the party find it possible 
to complete the journey. As conferences with the 
Indians further delayed them, it was not until 
a few days before Christmas that the invaders 
reached their goal. 

The capture of Vincennes proved easy enough. 
The surrender, none the less, was made in good 
military style. There were two iron three-pound- 
ers in the wretched little fort, and one of these 
was loaded to the muzzle and placed in the open 
gate. As Hamilton and his men advanced, so runs 
a not very well authenticated story, Lieutenant 


THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 59 


_Helm stood by the gun with a lighted taper and ~ 
called sternly upon the invaders to halt. The 
British leader demanded the surrender of the 
garrison. Helm parleyed and asked for terms. 
Hamilton finally conceded the honors of war, and 

~ Helm magnanimously accepted. Hamilton there- 
upon drew up his forces in a double line, the Bri ish 
on one side and the Indians on the other; and the 

garrison — one officer and one soldier — solemnly - 
marched out between them! After the “conquer- 
ors” had regained their equanimity, the cross of 

St. George was once more run up on the fort. A 

body of French militia returned to British alle- 

giance with quite as much facility as it had shown 
in accepting American sovereignty under the elo- 
quence of Father Gibault; and the French inhabi- 
tants, gathered again in the church, with perfectly 
straight faces acknowledged that they had “sinned 
against God and man”’ by taking sides with the 
rebels, and promised to be loyal thereafter to 

George ITI. 

Had the British forces immediately pushed on, 
this same scene might have been repeated at Kas- 
kaskia and Cahokia. Clark’s position there was 
far from strong. Upon the expiration of their 
term of enlistment most of his men had gone back 


60 THE OLD NORTHWEST — 7 


to Kentucky or Virginia, and their places had been ~ 
taken mainly by creoles, whose steadfastness was 
doubtful. Furthermore, the Indians were rest- 
less, and it was only by much vigilance and bra- 
vado that they were kept ina respectful mood. All 
this was well known to Hamilton, who now pro- 
posed to follow up the recapture of the Mississippi 
posts by the obliteration of all traces of American 
authority west of the Alleghanies. 

The difficulties and dangers of a midwinter cam- 
paign in the flooded Illinois country were not to be 
lightly regarded, and weeks of contending with icy 
blasts and drenching rains lent a seat by an open 
fire unusual attractiveness. Hence the comple- 
tion of the campaign was postponed until spring 
—a decision which proved the salvation of the , 
American cause in the West. As means of sub- 
sistence were slender, most of the Detroit militia 
were sent home, and the Indians were allowed to 
scatter to their distant wigwams. The force kept 
at the post numbered only about eighty or ninety 
whites, with a few Indians. 

Clark now had at Kaskaskia a band of slightly 
over a hundred men. He understood Hamilton’s 
army to number five or six hundred. The outlook 
was dubious, until Frangois Vigo, a friendly Span- 


THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 61 
ish trader of St. Louis, escaping captivity at Vin- 
cennes, came to Kaskaskia with the information 
that Hamilton had sent away most of his troops; ~~ 
and this welcome news gave the doughty Kentuck- 
ian a brilliant idea. He would defend his post by 
attacking the invaders while they were yet at 
Vincennes, and before they were ready to resume 
operations. “The case is desperate,”’ he wrote toa 
Governor Henry, “but, sir, we must either quit 
the country or attack Mr. Hamilton.” He had 
probably never heard of Scipio Africanus but, 
like that indomitable Roman, he proposed to carry 
the war straight into the enemy’scountry. ““There 
were undoubtedly appalling difficulties,” says Mr. 
Roosevelt, “in the way of a midwinter march and 
attack; and the fact that Clark attempted and 
performed the feat which Hamilton dared not try, 
marks just the difference between a mian of genius 
and a good, brave, ordinary commander.” 

Preparations were pushed with all speed. A 
large, flat-bottomed boat, the Willing, was fitted 
out with four guns and was sent down the Missis- 
sippi with forty men to ascend the Ohio and the 
Wabash to a place of rendezvous not far from the 
coveted post. By early February the depleted 
companies were recruited to their full strength; and 


62 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


after the enterprise had been solemnly blessed by 
Father Gibault, Clark and his forces, numbering 
one hundred and thirty men, pushed out upon the 
desolate, wind-swept prairie. 

The distance to be covered was about two hun- 
dred and thirty miles. Under favorable circum- 
stances, the trip could have been made in five 
or six days and with little hardship. The rainy 
season, however, was now at its height, and the 
country was one vast quagmire, overrun by swollen 
streams which could be crossed only at great risk. 
Ten days of wearisome marching brought the ex- 
pedition to the forks of the Little Wabash. The 
entire region between the two channels was under 
water, and for a little time it looked as if the whole 
enterprise would have to begiven up. There were 
no boats; provisions were running low; game was 
scarce; and fires could not be built for cooking. 

But Clark could not be turned back by such 
difficulties. He plunged ahead of his men, struck 
up songs and cheers to keep them in spirit, played 
the buffoon, went wherever danger was greatest, 
and by an almost unmatched display of bravery, 
tact, and firmness, won the redoubled admiration 
of his suffering followers and held them together. 
Murmurs arose among the creoles, but the Ameri- 


THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 63 


cans showed no signs of faltering. For more than 
a week the party floundered through the freezing 
water, picked its way from one outcropping bit 
of earth to another, and seldom found opportunity 
to eatorsleep. Rifles and powder-horns had to be 
borne by the hour above the soldiers’ heads to keep 
them dry. \ | 

Finally, on the 23d of February, a supreme effort 
carried the troops across the Horseshoe Plain, 
breast-deep in water, and out upon high ground two 
miles from Vincennes. By this time many of the 
men were so weakened that they could drag them- 
selves along only with assistance. But buffalo meat 
and corn were confiscated from the canoes of some 
passing squaws, and soon the troops were refreshed 
and in good spirits. The battle with the enemy 
ahead seemed as nothing when compared with the 
struggle with the elements which they had success- 
fully waged. No exploit of the kind in American 
history surpasses this, unless it be Benedict Ar- 
nold’s winter march through the wilderness of 
Maine in 1775 to attack Quebec. 

Two or three creole hunters were now taken 
captive, and from them Clark learned that no one 
in Vincennes knew of his approach. They reported, 
however, that, although the habitants were tired 


64 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


of the “‘Hair-Buyer’s”’ presence and would gladly 
return to American allegiance, some two hundred 
Indians had just arrived at the fort. The Willing 
had not been heard from. But an immediate at- 
tack seemed the proper course; and the young 
colonel planned and carried it out with the curious 
mixture of bravery and braggadocio of which he 
was a past master. 

__ First he drew up a lordly letter, addressed to 
\the inhabitants of the town, and dispatched it 
by one of his creole prisoners. ‘‘Gentlemen,” it 
ran, “being now within two miles of your village 
with my army... . and not being willing to sur- 
prise you, I take this step to request such of you 
as are true citizens, and willing to enjoy the liberty 
I bring you, to remain still in your houses. And 
those, if any there be, that are friends to the King, 
will instantly repair to the fort and join the Hair- 
Buyer General and fight like men.” Having thus 
given due warning, he led his “army” forward, 
marching and counter-marching his meager forces 
among the trees and hills to give an appearance 
of great numbers, while he and his captains helped 
keep up the illusion by galloping wildly here and 
there on horses they had confiscated, as if order- 
ing a vast array. At nightfall the men advanced 


THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 65 


upon the stockade and opened fire from two direc- 

tions. : 
Not until a sergeant reeled from his chair with a | 
bullet in his breast did the garrison realize that | | 
it was really under attack. The habitants had. 
kept their secret well. There was a beating of 
drums and a hurrying to arms, and throughout the 
night-a hot fusillade was kept up. By firing from 
behind houses and trees, and from rifle pits that 
were dug before the attack began, the Americans 
virtually escaped loss; while Hamilton’s gunners 
were picked off as fast as they appeared at the port- 
holes of the fort. Clark’s ammunition ran low, 
but the habitants furnished a fresh supply and at 
the same time a hot breakfast for the men. Ina 
few hours the cannon were silenced, and parleys 
were opened. Hamilton insisted that he and his 
garrison were “not disposed to be awed into an 
action unworthy of British subjects,” but they 
were plainly frightened, and Clark finally sent the 
commandant back to the fort from a conference 
in the old French church with the concession of one 
hour’s time in which to decide what he would do. 
To help him make up his mind, the American 
leader caused half a dozen Indians who had just 


returned from the forests with white men’s scalps 
5 


66 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


dangling at their belts to be tomahawked and 
thrown into the river within plain view of the 
garrison. 

Surrender promptly followed. Hamilton and _ 
twenty-five of his men were sent off as captives to : 
Virginia, where the commandant languished in 
“prison until, in 1780, he was paroled at the sugges- 
tion of Washington. On taking an oath of neu- 
trality, the remaining British sympathizers were 
set at liberty. For a second time the American 
flag floated over Indiana soil, not again to be 
lowered. 

Immediately after the capitulation of Hamilton, 
a scouting-party captured a relief expedition which 
was on its way from Detroit and placed in Clark’s 
hands ten thousand pounds’ worth of supplies for — 
distribution as prize-money among his deserving 
men. The commander’s cup of satisfaction was 
filled to the brim when the Willing appeared with 
a long-awaited messenger from Governor Henry 
who brought to the soldiers the thanks of the 
Legislature of Virginia for the capture of Kas- 
kaskia and also the promise of more substantial 
reward. 

The whole of. the Illinois_and_Indiana_country | 


was now in "American hands. Tenure, igmoneel 


THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 67 


was precarious so long as Detroit i = 
British Stronghold, and Clark now broadened his 
plans to embrace the capture of that strategic 
place. Leaving Vincennes in charge of a garrison 
of forty men, he returned to Kaskaskia with the 
Willing and set about organizing a new expedition. 
Kentucky pledged three hundred men, and Virginia 
promised to help. But when, in midsummer, the 
' commander returned to Vincennes to consolidate 
and organize his forces, he found the numbers to 
be quite insufficient. From Kentucky there came 
only thirty men. 

Disappointment followed disappointment; he 
was ordered to build a fort at the mouth of the_ 
Ohio — a project of which he had himself ap- 
proved; and when at last he had under his com- 
faand a force that might have been adequate for 
the Detroit expedition, he was obliged to use it in 
meeting a fresh incursion of savages which had 
been stirred up by the new British commandant on 
the Lakes. But Thomas Jefferson, who in 1779 
‘succeeded Henry as Governor of Virginia, was _~ 
deeply interested in the Detroit project, and at his 
suggestion Washington gave Clark an order on the 
commandant of Fort Pitt for guns, supplies, and 
such troops as could be spared. On January 22, 

Se ed = 


68 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


1781, Jefferson appointed Clark “‘brigadier-general 

of the forces to be embodied on an expedition 
westward of the Ohio.” Again Clark was doomed 
to disappointment. One obstacle after another 
interposed. Yet as late as May, 1781, the expect- 
ant conqueror wrote to Washington that he had 
“not yet lost sight of Detroit.” Suitable oppor- 
tunity for the expedition never came, and when 
peace was declared the northern stronghold was 
still in British hands. 

Clark’s later days were clouded. Although 
Virginia gave him six thousand acres of land in 
southern Indiana and presented him with a sword, 
peace left him without employment, and he was 
never able to adjust himself to the changed situa- 
tion. For many years he lived alone in a little 
cabin on the banks of the Ohio, spending his time 
hunting, fishing, and brooding over the failure of 
Congress to reward him in more substantial manner 
for his services. He was land-poor, lonely, and 
embittered. In 1818 hedied a paralyzed and help- 
less cripple. His resting place is in Cave Hill 
Cemetery, Louisville; the finest statue of him 
stands in Monument Circle, Indianapolis — “an 
athletic figure, scarcely past youth, tall and sinewy; 
with a drawn sword, in an attitude of energetic 


/ 


———— 


THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 69 


encouragement, as if getting his army through the 
drowned lands of the Wabash.’’* 

The capture of Vincennes determined the fate 
of the Northwest. Frontier warfare nevertheless 
‘went steadily on. In 1779 Spain entered the con- 
test as an ally of France, and it became the ob- 
ject of the British commanders on the Lakes not 
_ only to recover the posts lost'to the Americans but 
to seize St. Louis and other Spanish strongholds 
on the west bank of the Mississippi. In 1780 
Lieutenant-Governor Patrick Sinclair, a bustling, 
~garrulous old : soldier stationed at “Michilimackinac, 
sent a force of some nine hundred traders, servants, 
and Indians down the Mississippi to capture both 
the American and Spanish settlements. An attack 
on St. Louis failed, as did likewise a series of efforts 
against Cahokia and Kaskaskia, and the survivors 
were glad to reach their northern headquarters 
again, with nothing to show for their pains except 
a dozen prisoners. 

Not to be outdone, the Spanish commandant 
at St. Louis sent an expedition to capture British 
posts in the Lake country. An arduous winter 
march brought the avengers and their Indian allies 
to, Fort St. Joseph, a mile or two west of the 


tHosmer, Short History of the Mississippi Valley, p. 94. 


et 


j 


~/ 


it 


2 4 Q>STHE OLD NORTHWEST 


‘resent city of Niles, Michigan. It would be 
ungracious to say that this post was selected for 


attack because it was without a garrison. At all. 


events, the place was duly seized, the Spanish 
standard was set up, and possession of “the fort 
and its dependencies” was taken in the name of 
his Majesty Don Carlos III. No effort was made 
to hold the settlement permanently, and the Brit- 
ish from Detroit promptly retook it. Probably 
the sole intention had been to add somewhat to 
the strength of the Spanish position at the forth- 
coming negotiations for peace. 

The war in the West ended, as it began, in a 


-’ earnival of butchery. Treacherous attacks, mas- 


' sacres, burnings, and pillagings were everyday 


\ occurrences, and white men were hardly less at 


fault than red. Indeed the most discreditable of 
all the recorded episodes of the time was a heartless 
massacre by Americans of a large band of Indians 
that had been Christianized by Moravian mis- 
sionaries and brought together in a peaceful com- 
munity on the Muskingum. This slaughter of the 
innocents at Gnadenhiitten (“the Tents of Grace’’) 
reveals the frontiersman at his worst. But it was 
dearly paid for. From the Lakes to the Gulf red- 


skins rose for vengeance. Villages were wiped out, 


ae 


THE CONQUEST COMPLETED x / 


and murderous bands swept far into Virginia 
and Pennsylvania, evading fortified posts in order 
to fall with irresistible fury on unsuspecting traders 
and settlers. 
~ In midsummer, 1782, news of the cessation of 
hostilities between Great Britain and her former 
seaboard colonies reached the back country, and 
the commandant at Detroit made an honest ef- 
fort to stop all offensive operations. A messenger 
failed, however, to reach a certain Captain Cald- 
well, operating in the Ohio country, in time. to 
“prevent him from attacking a Kentucky settle- 
ment and bringing on the deadly Battle of Blue - 
Licks, in which the Americans were defeated with 
a loss of seventy-one men. George Rogers Clark 
forthwith led a retaliatory expedition against the 7 ) 
Miami towns, taking prisoners, recapturing whites, _ 
‘and destroying British trading establishments; and 
with this final flare-up the Revolution came to an | 
end in the Northwest. \ | 
The soldier had won the back country for the | 
new nation. Could the diplomat hold it? As 
early as March 19, 1779, — just three weeks after 
Clark’s capture of Vincennes, — the Continental 
Congress formally laid claim to the whole of the “ 
Northwest; and a few months later John Adams 


‘has :HE OLD NORTHWEST 


_s instructed to negotiate for peace on the under- 
standing that the country’s northern and western 
boundaries were to be the line of the Great Lakes 
and the Mississippi. When, in 1781, Franklin, | 
Jefferson, Jay, and Laurens were appointed to 
assist Adams in the negotiation, the new Congress 
of the Confederation stated that the earlier instruc- 
tions on boundaries represented its “desires and 
expectations.” 

It might have been supposed that if Great Brit- 
ain could be brought to accept these terms there 
would be no further difficulty. But obstacles 
arose from other directions. France had entered 
the war for her own reasons, and looked with 
decidedly more satisfaction on the defeat of Great 
Britain than on the prospect of a new and powerful 
nation in the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, 
she was in close alliance with Spain; and Spain had 
no sympathy whatever with the American cause 
as such. At all events, she did not want the 
United States for a neighbor on the Mississippi. 

The American commissioners were under in- 
structions to make no peace without consulting 
France. But when, in the spring of 1782, Jay 
came upon the scene of the negotiations at Paris, 
he demurred. He had been for some time in 


THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 73 


Spain, and he carried to Paris not only a keen 
contempt for the Spanish people and Spanish 
politics, but a strong suspicion that Spain was 
using her influence to keep the United States 
from getting the territory between the Lakes and 
the Ohio. France soon fell under similar suspicion, 
for she was under obligations, as everyone knew, 
to satisfy Spain; and little time elapsed before the 
penetrating American diplomat was semiofficially 
assured that his suspicions in both directions were 
well founded. 

The mainspring of Spanish policy was the desire | 
to make the Gulf of Mexico a closed sea, under ~~ 
exclusive Spanish control. This plan would be | 
frustrated if the Americans acquired an outlet on 
the Gulf; furthermore, it would be jeopardized | 
if they retained controi on the upper Mississippi., 
Hence, the States must be kept back from the) 
great river; safety dictated that they be confined | 
to the region east of the Appalachians. F 

An ingenious plan was thereupon developed. 
suring thereby the coveted unbroken coast line on ~< 
the Gulf. The vast area between the Mississippi” 
~ and the Appalachians and south of the Ohio was 
to be an Indian territory, half under Spanish and 


4 


%4 THE OLD mer. 
half under American ‘protec tion.” The entire 


region north of the Ohio was to be kept by Great ee 


Britain, or, at the most, divided — on lines to 
be determined — between Great Britain and the 
United States. From Rayneval, confidential sec- 
retary of the French oe Vergennes, 
Jay learned that the French Government proposed 
to give this scheme its support. 

Had such terms as these been forced on the new 
nation, the hundreds of Virginian and Pennsyl- 
vanian pioneers who had given up their lives in the 
planting of American civilization in the back coun- 
try would have turned in their graves. But Jay 
had no notion of allowing the scheme to succeed. 


He sent an emissary to England to counteract | 


the Spanish and French influence. He converted 
Adams to his way of thinking, and even raised 
doubts in Franklin’s mind. Finally he induced 
his colleagues to cast their instructions to the 
winds and negotiate a treaty with the mother 
country independently. 

This simplified matters immensely. Great Brit- 
ain was a beaten nation, and from the beginning 
her commissioners played a losing game. There 
was much haggling over the loyalists, the fisheries, 
debts; but the boundaries were quickly drawn. 


THE CONQUEST COMPLETED 


Great Britain preferred to see the disputed western 
country in American. hands rather than to leave ~ 
~a chance for it to fall under the control of one of 
her European rivals. 

Accordingly, the Treaty of Paris drew the in- \- 
terior boundary of the new nation through the 
Great Lakes and connecting waters to the Lake of 
the Woods; from the most northwestern point of | 
the Lake of the Woods due west to the Mississippi 
(an impossible line); down the Mississippi to | 
latitude 31°; thence east, by that parallel and by | | 
the line which is now the northern boundary of | | 
Florida, to the ocean. Three nations, instead of ) 
two, again shared the North American Continent: 

} 


Great Britain kept the territory north of the 
Lakes; Spain ruled the Floridas and everything | 
west of the Mississippi; the United States held the | 
remainder — an area of more than 825,000 square 


miles, with a population of three and one half 


CHAPTER V 
WAYNE, THE SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 


“Ts federal republic,” wrote the Spanish 
Count d’Aranda to his royal master in 1782, “is 
born a pigmy. A day will come when it will be 
a giant, even a colossus. Liberty of conscience, 
the facility for establishing a new population on 
immense lands, as well as the advantages of the 
new government, will draw thither farmers and 
artisans from all the nations.” 

Aranda correctly weighed the value of the 
country’s vast stretches of free and fertile land. 


The history of the United States has been largely 
_a-story of the clearing of forests, the laying out 
‘ of farms, the erection of homes, the construction 


of highways, the introduction of machinery, the 
building of railroads, the rise of towns and of 
great cities. The Germans of Wisconsin and 
Missouri, the Scandinavians of Minnesota and the 


Dakotas, the Poles and Hungarians of Chicago, 
76 


a 


i ae 
WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 77 
the Irish and Italians of 2 thousand communities, 
attest the fact that the “farmers and artisans from 
all the nations” have had an honorable part in the 
achievement. 

In layimg plans for the development of the 
western lands the statesmanship of the Revolu- 
tionary leaders was at its best. In the first place, 

“the seven States which had some sort of title to 

_ tracts extending westward to the Mississippi wisely 
yielded these claims to the nation; and thus was 
ereated a single, national domain which could be 
dealt with m accordance with a consistent policy. 
In the second place, Congress, as early as 1780, 
pledged the national Government to dispdse of the 
western lands for the common benefit, and prom- 
ised that they should be “setiled and formed into 
distinct republican states, which shall become mem- 
bers of the federal union, and have the same rights 
of sovereignty, freedom, and independence as the 
other states.” 

Finally, in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 
there was mapped out a scheme of government 
admirably adapied to the liberty-loving, yet law- 
abiding, populations of the frontier. It was based 
__ on the broad principles of democracy, and it wa and it was 
* sufficiently flexible to permit necessary changes as 


q 
b 
2 


78 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


_the scattered settlements developed into organ- 

| sed Territories and then into States. Geographical 

| conditions, as well as racial inheritances, fore- 

| ordained that the United States should be an ex- ~ 
panding, colonizing nation; and it was of vital 
importance that wholesome precedents of terri- 
torial control should be established in the begin- 
ning. Louisiana, Florida, the Mexican accessions, 
Alaska, and even the newer tropical dependen- 
cies, owe much to the decisions that were reached 
in the organizing of the Northwest a century anda 
quarter ago. 

The Northwest Ordinance was remarkable in 
that it was framed for a territory ‘that had practi- 
cally no white population and which, in a sense, 
did not belong to the United States at all. Back 
in 1768 Sir William Johnson’s Treaty of Fort 
Stanwix had made the Ohio River the boundary 
“between the white and red races of the West. 
Nobody at the close of the Revolution: supposed 
that this division would be adhered to; the North- 
west had not been won for purposes of an Indian 
reserve. None the less, the arrangements of 1768 
were inherited, and the nation considered them 
binding except in so far as they were modified from 
time to time by new agreements. The first such 


WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 79 


agreement affecting the Northwest was concluded 
in 1785, through George Rogers Clark and two 

mmissioners, with the Wyandots, Dela- 
wares, Chippewas, and Ottawas. By it the United 
States acquired title to the southeastern half of 
the present State of Ohio, with a view to survey- 
ing the lands and raising revenue by selling them. 
Successive treaties during the next thirty years 
_ gradually transferred the whole of the Northwest 
~ from Indian hands to the new nation. 


~ Officially, the United States recognized the | 


validity of the Indian claims; but the pioneer | 
homeseeker was not so certain to do so. From | 
about 1775 the country south of the Ohio filled | 


rapidly with settlers from Virginia and the Caroli- 
nas, so that by 1788 thé white population beyond 
the Blue Ridge was believed to be considerably 
over one hundred thousand. For a decade the 
“Indian side,” as the north shore was habitually 
called, was trodden only by occasional hunters, 
traders, and explorers. But after Clark’s vic- 
tories on the Mississippi and the Wabash, the 
frontiersmen grew bolder. By 1780 they began to 
plant camps and cabins on the rich bottom-lands 


of the Miamis, the Scioto, and the Muskingum; | 


and when they heard that the British claims in 


80 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


the West had been formally yielded, they assumed 
that whatever they could take was theirs. With 
the technicalities of Indian claims they had not 
much patience. In 1785 Colonel Harmar, com- 
manding at Fort t Pitt, sent a deputation . down the 
river to drive the intruders back. But his agents 
returned with the report that the Virginians and 
Kentuckians were moving into the forbidden 
country “‘by the forties and fifties,” and that they 
gave every evidence of proposing to remain there. 
Surveyors were forthwith set to work in the 
“ Seven Ranges,”’ as the tract just to the west of 
the Pennsylvania boundary was called; and Fort 
Harmar was built at the mouth of the Muskingum 
to keep the over-ardent settlers back. 

The close of the Revolution brought not only a 
swift revival of emigration to the West but also a 
remarkable outburst of speculation in western land. 
March 3, 1786, General Rufus Putnam and some 
other Continental officers met at the “Bunch of 
Grapes” Tavern in Boston and decided that it 
would be to their advantage to exchange for land 
in the Seven Ranges the paper certificates in which 
they had been paid for their military services. 
Accordingly an “‘Ohio Company.” was organized, 
and Dr. Manasseh Cutler — ‘preacher, lawyer, 


WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 81 


doctor, statesman, scientist, land speculator” — 
was sent off to New York to push the matter in 
Congress. The upshot was that Congress author- 
ized the sale of one and a half million acres east of 
the Scioto to the Ohio Company, and five million - 


acres s to : a newly organized Scioto Company. 
~The Scioto Company fell into financial difficul- 
ties and, after making an attempt to build up a — 
French colony at Gallipolis, collapsed. But Gen- 
eral Putnam and his associates kept their affairs 
well in hand and succeeded in planting the first 
legal white settlement in the present State of ” 
Ohio. An arduous winter journey brought the 
first band of forty-eight settlers, led by Putnam 
himself, to the mouth of the Muskingum on 
April 7, 1 788. __Here, i in the midst of a great forest 
dotted with terraces, cones, and other fantastic 
memorials of the moundbuilders, they erected a 
blockhouse and surrounded it with cabins. For a 
touch of the classical, they called the fortification 
the Campus Martius; to be strictly up to date, 
they named the town Marietta, after Marie An- 
toinette, Queen of Franée. In July the little 
settlement was honored by being made the resi- 


dence of the newly arrived Governor of the Terri- : 
tory, General Arthur St. Clair. 
6 


82 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


Before the close of the year Congress sold one 
million acres between the two Miamis to Judge 
Symmes of New Jersey; and three little towns were 
atoncelaid out. To one of them a pedantic school- 
master gave the name L-os-anti-ville, “the town 
opposite the mouth of the Licking.” The name 
may have required too much explanation; at all 
events, when, in 1790, the Governor transferred 
the capital thither from Marietta, he rechristened 
the place C Cincinnati, 1 in honor of the famous Revo- / 
lutionary society to which he belonged. 

Land speculators are confirmed optimists. But 
Putnam, Cutler, Symmes, and their associates 
were correct in believing that the Ohio country 
was at the threshold of a period of remarkable 
development. There was one serious obstacle — 
the Indians. Repeated expeditions from Kentucky 
had pushed most of the tribes northward to the 
headwaters of the Miami, Scioto, and Wabash; 
and the Treaty of 1785 was supposed to keep them 
there. But it was futile to expect such an arrange- 
ment to prove lasting unless steadily backed up 
with force. In their squalid villages in the swampy 
forests of northern Ohio and Indiana the redskins 
grew sullen and vindictive. As they saw their fa- 
vorite hunting-grounds slipping from their grasp, 


WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 33 


those who had taken part in the cession repented 
their generosity, while those who had no part in it 
pronounced it fraudulent and refused to consider 
themselves bound by it. Swiftly the idea took 
hold that the oncoming wave must be rolled back 
before it was too late. “White man shall not 
plant corn north of the Ohio” became the rallying 
cry. 
Back of this rebelliousness lay a certain amount| 
of British influence. The Treaty of 1783 was| 


, 
signed in as kindly spirit as the circumstances 


would permit, but its provisions were not carried 
out in acharitable manner. On account of alleged 
shortcomings of the United States, the British 
Government long refused to give up possession of 
eight or ten fortified posts in the north and west. 


Gee of these was Detroit; and the officials stationed “ 


there systematically encouraged the hordes of red- 
skins who had congregated about the western end 
of Lake Erie to make all possible resistance to the 
American advance. The British no longer had 
any claim to the territories south of the Lakes, 
but they wanted to keep their ascendancy over 
the ; northwestern Indians, and especially to pre- 
vent the rich fur trade from falling into-Ameérican 
hands. , Ammunition and other supplies were lav- 


a - 


Q 


84 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


ished on the restless tribes. The post officials in- 
sisted that these were merely the gifts which had 
regularly been made in times of peace. But they 
were used with deadly effect against the Ohio fron- 
tiersmen; and there can be little doubt that they 
were intended so to be used. 

By 1789 the situation was very serious. Ma- 
rauding expeditions were growing in frequency; 
and a scout sent out by Governor St. Clair came 
back with the report that most of the Indians 
throughout the entire Northwest had “bad hearts.” 
Washington decided that delay would be danger- 
ous, and the nation forthwith prepared for its first 
war since independence. Kentucky was asked to 
furnish a thousand militiamen and Pennsylvania _ 
five hundred, and the forces were ordered to come: 
together at Fort Washington, near Cincinnati. 

The rendezvous took place in “the summer of 
1790, and General Josiah Harmar was put in com- _ 
mand of a punitive expedition against the Miamis. 
The recruits were raw, and Harmar was without — 
the experience requisite for such an enterprise. 
None the less, when the little army, accompanied 
by three hundred regulars, and dragging three 
brass field-pieces, marched out of Fort Washington 
on a fine September day, it created a very good 


WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 


impression. All went well until the expedition 
reached the Maumee country. On the site of the 
present city of Fort Wayne they destroyed a 
number of Indian huts and burned a quantity of 
corn. But in a series of scattered encounters the 
white men were defeated, with a loss of nearly 
two hundred killed; and Harmar thought it the 
part of wisdom to retreat. He had gained nothing 
by the expedition; on the contrary, he had stirred 
the redskins to fresh aggressions, and his re- 
treating forces were closely followed by bands of 
merciless raiders. 

Washington knew what the effect of this reverse 
would be. Accordingly he called St. Clair to Phila- 
delphia and ordered him to take personal command 
of a new expedition, adding a special warning 
against ambush and surprise. Congress aided by 
voting two thousand troops for six months, besides 
two small regiments of regulars. But everything 
went wrong. Recruiting proved slow; the men 
who were finally brought together were poor ma- 
terial for an army, being gathered chiefly from 
the streets and prisons of the seaboard cities; and 
supplies were shockingly inadequate. 

St. Clair was a man of honest intention, but old, 
broken in health, and of very limited military 


- THE OLD NORTHWEST 


.oility; and when finally, October 4, art he led 
his untrained forces slowly northwards from Fort 
Washington, he utterly failed to take measures 
either to keep his movements secret or to protect 
his men against sudden attack. The army trudged 
slowly through the deep forests, chopping out its 
own road, and rarely advancing more than five or 
six miles a day. The weather was favorable and 
game was abundant, but discontent was rife and 
desertions became daily occurrences. As most of 
the men had no taste for Indian warfare and as 
their pay was but two dollars a month, not all the 
commander’s threats and entreaties could hold 
them in order. 

On the night of the 3d of November the little — 
army — now reduced to fourteen hundred men — j 
camped, with divisions carelessly scattered, on 
the eastern fork of the Wabash, about a hundred 
miles north of Cincinnati and near the Indiana 
border. The next morning, when preparations 
were being made for a forced march against some 
Indian villages near by, a horde of redskins burst 
unexpectedly upon the bewildered troops, sur- 
rounded them, and threatened them with utter 
destruction. A brave stand was made, but there 
was little chance of victory. “After the first on- 


WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 87 
set,” as Roosevelt has described the baitle, “the 


Indians fought in silence, no sound coming from 
them save the incessant rattle of their fire, as they 
crept from log to log, from tree to tree, ever closer 
and closer. The soldiers stood in close order, in 
the open; their musketry and artillery fire made a 
tremendous noise, but did little damage to a foe 
they could hardly see. Now and then through 
the hanging smoke terrible figures flitted, painted 
black and red, the feathers of the hawk and eagle 
braided in their long scalp-locks; but save for these 
glimpses, the soldiers knew the presence of their 
somber enemy only from the fearful rapidity with 
which their comrades fell dead and wounded in 
the ranks.” 

At last, in desperation St. Clair ordered his men 
to break through the deadly cordon and save 
themselves as best they could. The Indians kept 
up a hot pursuit for a distance of four miles. 
Then, surfeited with slaughter, they turned to 
plunder the abandoned camp; otherwise there 
would have been escape for few. As it was, 
almost half of the men in the engagement were 
killed, and less than five hundred got off with no 
injury. The survivors gradually straggled into 
the river settlements, starving and disheartened. 


88 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


The page on which is written the story of St. 
Clair’s defeat is one of the gloomiest in the his- — 
tory of the West. Harmar’s disaster was dwarfed; 
not since Braddock and his regulars were cut to 
pieces by an unseen foe on the road to Fort Du- — 
quesne had the redskins inflicted upon their hered- 
itary enemy a blow of such proportions. It was 
with a heavy heart that the Governor dispatched a 
messenger to Philadelphia with the news. Con- 
gress ordered an investigation; and in view of the ~ 
unhappy general’s high character and his courage- — 
ous, though blundering, conduct during the late 
campaign, he was exonerated. He retained the 
governorship, but prudently resigned his military 
command. 

The situation was now desperate. Everywhere : 
the forests resounded with the exultant cries of the - 
victors, while the British from Detroit and other 
posts actively encouraged the belief not only that 
they would furnish all necessary aid but that 
England herself was about to declare war on the 
United States. Eventually a British force from 
Detroit actually invaded the disputed country and 
built a stockade (Fe ort Miami) near the site of the — 
present city of Toledo, with a view to giving the 
redskins convincing evidence of the seriousness — 


ee ee ee 


WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 89 


of the Great White Father’s intentions. Small 
wonder that, when St. Clair sought to obtain by 
diplomacy the settlement which he had failed to 
secure by arms, his commissioners were met with 
the ultimatum: ‘‘ Brothers, we shall be persuaded 
that you mean to do us justice, if you agree that 
the Ohio shall remain the boundary line between 
us. If you will not consent thereto, our meeting 
will be altogether unnecessary.” 

It is said that Washington’s first choice for the 
new western command was “Light-Horse Harry” 
Lee. But considerations of rank made the ap- 
pointment inexpedient, and “Mad_ Anthony’ 

Wayne was named instead. Wayne” was the son 
of a Pennsylvania frontiersman and came honestly 
by his aptitude for Indian fighting. In early life 
he was a surveyor, and in the Revolution he won 
distinction as a dashing commander of Penn- 
sylvania troops at Ticonderoga, Brandywine, Ger- 
mantown, Stony Point, and other important en- 
‘gagements. Finally he obtained a major-general’s 
commission in Greene’s campaign in Georgia, and 
at the close of the war he settled in that State as a 
planter. His vanity — displayed chiefly in a love 
of fine clothes — brought upon him a good deal 
of criticism; and Washington, who in a Cabinet 


\" 


90 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


' meeting characterized him as “brave and nothing | 
else,”’ was frankly apprehensive lest in the present — 
business Wayne’s impetuosity should lead to fresh 
disaster. Yet the qualities that on a dozen occa- 
sions had enabled Wayne to snatch success from 
almost certain defeat — alertmess, decisiveness, 
bravery, and sheer love of hard fighting — were 
those now chiefly in demand. 

The first task was to create an army. A few _ 
regulars were available; but most of the three or 
four thousand men who were needed had to be 
gathered wheresoever they could be found. A 
call for recruits brought together at Pittsburgh, 
in the summer of 1792, a nondescript lot of beg- 
gars, criminals, and other cast-offs of the eastern 
cities, no better and no worse than the adventurers ~ 
who had taken service under St. Clair. Few knew 
anything of warfare, and on one occasion a mere 
report of Indians in the vicinity caused a third of 
the sentinels to desert their posts. But, as rigid 
discipline was enforced and drilling was carried on 
for eight and ten hours a day, by spring the sur- 
vivors formed a very respectable body of troops. 
The scene of operations was then transferred 
to Fort Washington, where fresh recruits were 
started on a similar course of development. Profit-— 


WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 91 


ing by the experience of his predecessors, Wayne 
insisted that campaigning should begin only after 
the troops were thoroughly prepared; and no 
drill-master ever worked harder to get his charges 
into condition for action. Going beyond the or- 
dinary manual of arms, he taught the men to 
load their ‘rifles while running at full speed, and 
to yell at the top of their voices while making a 
bayonet attack. 

In Qctober, 1793, the intrepid Major-General 
advanced with twenty-six hundred men into the 
nearer stretches of the Indian country, in order 
to be in a position for an advantageous spring 
campaign. They built Fort Greenville, eighty 
miles north of Cincinnati, and there spent the win- 
ter, while, on St. Clair’s fatal battle-field, an ad- 
vance detachment built a post which they hope- 
fully christened Fort Recovery. Throughout the 
winter unending drill was kept up; and when, in 
June, 1794, fourteen hundred mounted militia ar- 
rived from Kentucky, Wayne found himself at 
the head of the largest and best-trained force 
that had ever been turned against the Indians 
west of the Alleghanies. Even before the arrival 
of the Kentuckians, it proved its worth by de- 
fending its forest headquarters, with practically 


Te 
92 THE OLD NORTHWEST 4 


no loss, against an attack by fifteen hundred 
redskins. } 

On the 27th of July the army moved forward ~ 
in the direction of the Maumee, with closed ranks — 
and so guarded by scouts that no chance what- — 
ever was given for surprise attacks. Washington’s — 
admonitions had been taken to heart, and the . 


<n ps ey 


Indians could only wonder and admire. News 
of the army’s advance traveled ahead and struck 
terror through the northern villages, so that many 
of the inhabitants fled precipitately. When the 
troops reached the cultivated lands about the 
junction of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers, they 
found only deserted huts and great fields of corn, — 
from which they joyfully replenished their di- 
minished stores. Here a fort was built and given ; 
the significant name Defiance; and from it a final 4 
offer of peace was sent out to the hostile tribes. 
Never doubting that the British would furnish 
all necessary aid, the chieftains returned evasive 
answers. Wayne thereupon moved his troops to 
the left bank of the Maumee and proceeded cau-— 
tiously downstream toward the British stronghold 
at Fort Miami. | 
A few days brought the army to a place known . 
as Fallen Timbers, where a tornado had piled the - 
3 


WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 93 


trunks and branches of mighty trees in indescrib- 
able confusion. The British post was but five 
or six miles distant; and there behind the breast- 
works which nature had provided, and in easy 
reach of their allies, the Indians chose to make 
their stand. On the morning of the 20th of August, 
Wayne, now so crippled by gout that he had to 
be lifted into his saddle, gallantly led an assault. 
“The Indian fire was murderous, and a battalion of 
mounted Kentuckians was at first hurled back. 
But the front line of infantry rushed up and dis- 
lodged the savages from their covert, while the 
regular cavalry on the right charged the enemy iu” 
left flank. Before the second line of infantry ~ 
could get into action the day was won. The whole 
engagement lasted less than three-quarters of an 
hour, and not a third of Wayne’s three thousand 
men actually took part in it. 

The fleeing redskins were pursued to the walls 
of the British fort, and even there many were 
slain. The British soldiery not only utterly 
failed to come to the relief of their hard-pressed 
allies, but refused to open the gates to give them 
shelter. The American loss was thirty-three killed 
and one hundred wounded. But the victory was 
the most decisive as yet gained over the Indians 


“_ THE OLD NORTHWEST 


of the Northwest. A warfare of forty years was 
ended in as many minutes. 

From the lower Maumee, Wayne marched back 
to Fort Defiance, and thence to the junction of the 
St. Mary’s and St. Joseph rivers, where he built 
a fort and gave it the name still borne by the 
thriving city that grew up around it — Fort _ 
Wayne, Everywhere the American soldiers de- 
stroyed the ripened crops and burned the villages, 
while the terrified inhabitants fled. In November 
the army took up winter quarters at Fort Green- 
ville. 

At last the Americans had the upper hand. 
Their arms were feared; the British promises of 
help were no longer credited by the Indians; and _ 
it was easy for Wayne to convince the tribal re- — 
presentatives who visited him in large numbers 
during the winter that their true interest was to 
win the good-will of the United States. In the 
summer of 1795 there was a general pacification. 
Delegation after delegation arrived at Fort Green- 
ville, until more than a thousand chiefs and braves 
were in attendance. The prestige of Wayne was 
still further increased when the news came that 
John Jay had negotiated a treaty at London under 
which the British posts on United States soil were 


WAYNE, SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS 95 


finally to be given up; and on August 3rd Wayne 
was able to announce a great treaty wherein the 
natives ceded all of what is now southern Ohio 
and southeastern Indiana, and numerous tracts 
around posts within the Indian country, such as 
Fort Wayne, Detroit, and Michilimackinac — 
strategic points on the western waterways. “‘Elder 
Brother,” said a Chippewa chief in the course of 
. one of the interminable harangues delivered during 
the negotiation, “you asked who were the true 
owners of the land now ceded to the United States. 
In answer, I tell you, if any nations should call 
themselves the owners of it, they would be guilty 
of falsehood; our claim to it is equal; our Elder 
Brother has conquered it.” The United States 
duly recognized the Indian title to all lands not 
expressly ceded and promised the Indians annual 
subsidies. The terms of the treaty were faithfully 
observed on both sides, and for fifteen years the 
pioneer lived and toiled in peace. 

Wayne forthwith became a national hero. Re- 
turning to Philadelphia in 1796, he was met by a 
guard of honor, hailed with the ringing of bells 
and a salute of fifteen guns, and treated to a 
dazzling display of fireworks. Congress voted its 
thanks, and Washington, whose fears had long 


i 


— 


96 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


since vanished, added his congratulations. There 
was one other service on the frontier for the doughty 
general to render. The British posts were at 
last to be surrendered, and Wayne was designated 
to receive them. By midsummer he was back in 
the forest country, and in the autumn he took 
possession of Detroit, amid acclamations of In- 
dians, Americans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen 
alike. But his work was done. On the return 
journey he suffered a renewed attack of his old 
enemy, gout, and at Presqu’isle (Erie) he died. 
A blockhouse modeled on the defenses which he 
built during his western campaign marks his first 
resting-place and bears aloft the flag which he 
helped plant in the heart of the Continent. 


“J 
oti a 


CHAPTER VI 
THE GREAT MIGRATION 


Wuite the fate of the Northwest still hung in 
the balance, emigration from the eastern States 
became the rage. “Every small farmer whose 
barren acres were covered with mortgages, whose 
debts pressed heavily upon him, or whose roving 
spirit gave him no peace, was eager to sell his 
homestead for what it would bring and begin life 
anew on the banks of the Muskingum or the Ohio.””* 
Land companies were then just as optimistic and 
persuasive as they are today, and the attractions 
of the western country lost nothing in the telling. 
Pamphlets described the climate as luxurious, the 
soil as inexhaustible, the rainfall as both abun- 
dant and well distributed, the crops as unfailingly 
bountiful; paid agents went among the people 
assuring them that a man of push and courage 


McMaster, History of the People of the United States, vol. m, 
p. 461. 
7 97 


— 


98 THE OLD NORTHWEST q 


could nowhere be so prosperous and so happy as” 
in the West. * 

As early as 1787 an observer at Pittsburgh re- 
ported that in six weeks he saw fifty flatboats set off 
for the down-river settlements; in 1788 forty-five 
hundred emigrants were said to have passed Fort 
Harmar between February and June. Most of 
these people were bound for Kentucky or Tennes- 
see. But the census of 1790 gave the population 
north of the Ohio as 4,280, and after Wayne’s vic- 
tory the proportion of newcomers who fixed their 
abodes in that part of the country rapidly increased. 
For a decade Ohio was the favorite goal; and 
within eight years after the battle at Fallen Tim- 
bers this region was ready for admission to the 
Union as a State. Southern Indiana also filled 
rapidly. 

For a time the westward movement was re- 
garded as of no disadvantage to the seaboard 
States. It was supposed that the frontier would 
attract a population of such character as could 
easily be spared in more settled communities. But 
it became apparent that the new country did not 
appeal simply to broken-down farmers, bankrupts, 
and ne’er-do-wells. Robust and industrious men, 
with growing families, were drawn off in great 


THE GREAT MIGRATION Oo 


numbers; and \public protest was raised against 
the “plots to drain the East of its best blood.” 
Anti-emigration pamphlets. were-scattered broad- 
cast, and, after the manner of the day, the lead- 
ing western enterprises were belabored with much 
bad verse. A rude cut which gained wide circu- 
lation represented a stout, ruddy, well-dressed 
man on a sleek horse, with a label, ““I am going to 
Ohio,” meeting a pale and ghastly skeleton of a 
man, in rags, on the wreck of what had once been a 
horse, with the label, “I have been to Ohio.” 

The streams of migration flowed from many 
sources. New England contributed heavily. Mari- 
etta, Cincinnati, and many other rising river 
towns received some of the best blood of that 
remote section. The Western Reserve — a tract 
bordering on Lake Erie which Connecticut had 
not ceded to the Federal Government — drew 
largely from the Nutmeg State. A month before 
Wayne set out to take possession of Detroit, Moses 
Cleaveland with a party of fifty Connecticut 
homeseekers started off to found a settlement in 
the Reserve; and the town which took its name 
from the leader was but the first of a score which 
promptly sprang up in this inviting district. The 
“Seven Ranges,” lying directly south of the Re- 


THE OLD NORTHWEST | 


We, drew emigrants from Pen sylvania, with 
jome from farther south. The Scioto valley at- 9 
/ tracted chiefly Virginians, who early made Chilli- t 
~ cothe their principal center. In the west, “and 
north of the Symmes tract, Kentuckians poured — 
in by the thousands. 

Thus in a decade Ohio became a frontier ‘melting- 
pot. Puritan, Cavalier, Irishman, Scotch-Irish 
man, German — all were poured. into the cruci-— 
ble. Ideals clashed, and differing customs grated — 
harshly. But the product of a hundred years of 
cross-breeding was a “splendid type of ‘citizenship. 
At the presidential inaugural ceremonies of March 
4, 1881, six men chiefly attracted the attention 
of the crowd: the retiring President, Hayes; the 
incoming President, Garfield; the Chief-Justice / 
who administered the oath, Waite; the general 
commanding the army, William T. Sherman; the 
ex-Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman; and 
“the Marshal Ney of America,” Lieutenant- ; 
General Sheridan. Five of the six were natives of | 
Ohio, and the sixth was a lifelong resident. Men 
commented on the striking group and rightly re- 
marked that it could have been produced only by 
a singularly happy blending of the ideas and ideals 
that form the warp and woof of Americanism. 


a 


THE GREAT MIGRATION 101 


Amalgamation, however, took time; for there 
were towering prejudices and antipathies to be 
overcome. The Yankee scorned the Southerner, 
who reciprocated with a double measure of dislike. 
The New England settlers were, as a rule, people 
of some education; not one of their communities 
long went without a schoolmaster. They were 
pious, law-abiding, industrious; their more easy- 

~ going neighbors were likely to consider them over- 
sensitive and critical. But the quality that made 
most impression upon others was their shrewdness 
in business transactions. They could drive a bar- 
gain and could discover loopholes in a contract 
in a fashion to take the average backwoodsman 
| off his feet. “Yankee trick” became, indeed, a 
household phrase wherever New Englander and 
Southerner met. Whether the Yankee talked or 


kept silent, whether he was generous or parsimoni- 


| ous, he was always under suspicion. 

\ What of the “Long Knives” from Virginia, the 
Carolinas, and Kentucky who also made the Ohio 
lands their goal? Of books they knew little; they 
did not name their settlements in honor of classic 
heroes. They were not “gentlemen”: many of 
them, indeed, had sought the West to escape a 
society in which distinctions of birth and posses- 


102 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


sions had put them at a disadvantage. They were 
not so pious as the New Englanders, though they — 
were capable of great religious enthusiasm, and ~ 
their morals were probably not inferior. Their 
houses were poorer; their villages were not so well 
kept; their dress was more uncouth, and their ways 
rougher. But they were a hardy folk — brave, in- | \ 
dustrious, hospitable, and generous to.a fault. 
In the first days of westward migration the 
favorite gateway satis ae Ohio Valley was Cum- 
berland Gap, at the southeastern corner “of the 
present State of Kentucky. Thence the Virginians 
and Carolinians passed easily to the Ohio in the 
region of Cincinnati or Louisville. Later emi- 
grants from more northern States found other 
serviceable routes. Until the opening of the Erie J 
Canal in 1825, New Englanders reached the West 
by three main avenues. Some followed the/Mo- _ 
hawk and Genesee turnpikes across central New 
York to Lake Erie. This route led directly, of 
course, to Ahe Western Reserve. Some traveled 
along atskill turnpike from the Hudson to the “ 
headwaters of the Allegheny, and thence descended 
the Ohio. Still others went by boat from Boston / 
to New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, in order 
to approach the Ohio by a more southerly course. 


THE GREAT MIGRATION 103 


The natural outlet from Pennsylvania was the 
Ohio River. Emigrants from the western parts 
“of the State floated down the Allegheny or Monon- 
gahela to the main stream. Those from farther 


east, including settlers from New J ersey, made the - 


journey overland by one of several well-known 
roads. The best of these was a turnpike follow- 
ing the line that General Forbes had cut during 
the French and Indian War from Philadelphia to 
Pittsburgh by way of Lancaster and Bedford. 
Baltimore was a favorite point of departure, and 
from it the route lay almost invariably along a 
turnpike to Cumberland on the upper Potomac, 
and thence by the National Road across the moun- 
tains to Wheeling. In later days this was the 
route chiefly taken from Virginia, although more 
southerly passes through the Blue Ridge were used 
as outlets to the Great. Kanawha, the Big Sandy, 
and other streams flowing into the Ohio farther 
down. 

Thus the lines of westward travel which in the 
East spread fan-shape from Maine to Georgia 
converged on the Ohio; and that stream became, 
and for half a century remained, the great path- 
way of empire. Most of the emigrants had to 
cover long distances in overland travel before they 


eS 


104 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


reached the hospitable waterway; some, especially 
in earlier times, made the entire journey by land. 


Hundreds of the very poor went afoot, carrying 
all their earthly possessions on their backs, or 
dragging them in rude carts. But the usual con- ; 
veyance was the canvas-covered wagon —an- J 
cestor of the “prairie schooner” of the western 
plains — drawn over the rough and muddy roads 
by four, or even six, horses. In this vehicle the | 
emigrants stowed their provisions, household furni- 
ture and utensils, agricultural implements, looms, 
seeds, medicines, and every sort of thing that the 
prudent householder expected to need, and for 
which he could find space. Extra horses or oxen 
sometimes drew an additional load; cattle, and 
even flocks of sheep, were occasionally driven ahead 
or behind by some member of the family. 

In the years of heaviest migration the high- 
ways converging on Pittsburgh and Wheeling were 
fairly crowded with westward-flowing traffic. As 
a rule several families, perhaps from the same 
neighborhood in the old home, traveled together; 
and in any case the chance acquaintances of the 
road and of the wayside inns broke the loneliness 
of the journey. There were wonderful things to 
be seen, and every day brought novel experiences. 


| 


THE GREAT MIGRATION 105 


But exposure and illness, dread of Indian attacks, 
mishaps of every sort, and the awful sense of isola- 
tion and of uncertainty of the future, caused many 
a man’s stout heart to quail, and brought anguish 
unspeakable to brave women. Of such joys and 
sorrows, however, is a frontier existence com- 
pounded; and of the growing thousands who turned 
their faces toward the setting sun, comparatively 
' few yielded to discouragement and went back 
East. Those who did so were usually the land 
speculators and people of weak, irresolute, or shift- 
less character. 

An English traveler, Morris Birkbeck, who 
passed over the National Road through south- 
western Pennsylvania in 1817, was filled with 
amazement at the number; hardihood, and deter- 
mination of the emigrants whom he encountered. 


Old America seems to be breaking up [he wrote] and 
moving westward. We are seldom out of sight, as we 
travel on this grand track, towards the Ohio, of family 
groups, behind and before us. . . . A small wagon (so 
light that you might almost carry it, yet strong enough 
to bear a good load of bedding, utensils and provisions, 
and a swarm of young citizens — and to sustain mar- 
velous shocks in its passage over these rocky heights) 
with two small horses; sometimes a cow or two, com- 
prises their all; excepting a little store of hard-earned 


106 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


cash for the land office of the district; where they may 
obtain a title for as many acres as they possess half- 
dollars, being one fourth of the purchase money. The 
wagon has a tilt, or cover, made of a sheet, or perhaps a 
blanket. The family are seen before, behind, or within 
the vehicle, according to the road or the weather, or 
perhaps the spirits of the party. . . . A cart and sin- 
gle horse frequently affords the means of transfer, 
sometimes a horse and pack-saddle. Often the back 
of the poor pilgrim bears all his effects, and his wife 
follows, naked-footed, bending under the hopes of the 
family.* 


Arrived at the Ohio, the emigrant either engaged _ 


passage on some form of river-craft or set to work 
to construct with his own hands a vessel that would 
bear him and his belongings to the promised land. 
The styles of river-craft that appeared on the Ohio 
and other western streams in the great era of 
river migration make a remarkable pageant. There 
were canoes, pirogues, skiffs, rafts, dugouts, scows, 
galleys, arks, keelboats, flatboats, barges, “‘broad- 


99 «6 >’ 


horns,” “sneak-boxes,” and eventually ocean-go- 
ing brigs, schooners, and steamboats. The canoe 
served the early explorer and trader, and even 
the settler whose possessions had been carried over 
the Alleghanies on a single packhorse. But af- 
ter the Revolution the needs of an awakening 


tQuoted in Turner, Rise of the New West, pp. 79-80. 


“a 


Kot 


THE GREAT MIGRATION 107 


empire led to the introduction of new types of 
craft, built to afford a maximum of capacity and 
safety on a downward voyage, without regard for 
the demands of a round trip. The most common 
of these one-way vessels was the flatboat. 

A flatboat trip down the great river was likely 
to be filled with excitement. The sound of the 
steam-dredge had never been heard on the west- 
ern waters, and the stream-bed was as Nature 
had made it, or rather was continually remaking 
it. Yearly floods washed out new channels and 
formed new reefs and sand-bars, while logs and 
brush borne from the heavily forested banks con- 
tinually built new obstructions. Consequently 
the sharpest lookout had to be maintained, and 
the pilot was both skilful and lucky who com- 
pleted his trip without permitting his boat to be 
caught on a “planter” (a log immovably fixed 
in the river bed), entangled in the branches of 
overhanging trees, driven on an island, or dashed 
on the bank ata bend. Navigation by night and 
on foggy days was hazardous in the extreme and 
was avoided as far as possible. If all went well, 
the voyage from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati could 
be completed in six or eight days; but delays might 
easily extend the period to a month. 


/ 108 THE OLD NORTHWEST  \ 


One grave danger has not been mentioned — 
_ the Indians. From the moment when the slow- 
moving flatboat passed beyond the protection of a 
white settlement, it was liable to be fired on, by 
day or by night, by redskins; and the better- 
built boats were so constructed as to be at least 
partially bullet-proof. Sometimes extra timber 
was used to give safety; sometimes the cargo was 
specially placed with that aim in view. The 
Indians rarely went beyond the water’s edge. 
Their favorite ruse was to cause captive or rene- 
gade whites to run along the bank imploring to be 
saved. When a boat had been decoyed to shore, 
and perhaps a landing had been made, the savages 
would pour a murderous fire on the voyagers. 
This practice became so common that pioneer 
boats “‘shunned the whites who hailed them from 
the shores as they would have shunned the Indi- © 
ans,”’ and as a consequence many whites escaping 
from the Indians in the imterior were refused suc- 
cor and left to die. 

When the flatboat reached its destination, it 
might find service as a floating store, or even as a 
schoolhouse. But it was likely to be broken up, 
so that the materials in it could be used for building 
purposes. Before sawmills became common, lum- 


THE GREAT MIGRATION __109 


ber was a precious commodity, and hundreds of 
pioneer cabins in the Ohio Valley were built partly 
or wholly of the boards and timbers taken from 
the flatboats of their owners. Even the “gun- 
nels” were sometimes used in Cincinnati as founda- 
tions for houses. In later days the flatboat, if in 
reasonably good condition, was not unlikely to ~ 
be sold to persons engaged in trading down the 
q Mississippi. Loaded with grain, flour, meats, and 
other backwoods products, it would descend to 
Natchez or New Orleans, where its cargo could be 
transferred to ocean-going craft. But in any case 
its end was the same; for it would not have been 
profitable, even had it been physically possible, 
to move the heavy, ungainly craft upstream over 
long distances, in order to keep it continuousty in 
service. 


CHAPTER VII 
PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 


Arrivep on the lower Ohio, or one of its tribu- 
taries, the pioneer looked out upon a land of 
remarkable riches. It was not a Mexico or a 
Peru, with emblazoned palaces and glittering tem- 
ples, nor yet a California, with gold-flecked sands. 
It was merely an unending stretch of wooded 
hills and grassy plains, bedecked with majestic 
forests and fructifying rivers and lakes. It had 
no treasures save for the man of courage, indus- 
try, and patience; but for such it held home, broad 
acres, liberty, and the coveted opportunity for so- 
cial equality and advancement. 

The new country has been commonly thought 
of, and referred to by writers on the history of the 
West, as a “wilderness”; and offhand, one might 
suppose that the settlers were obliged literally to 
hew their way through densely grown vegetation 


to the spots which they selected for tneir homes. 
110 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 111 


In point of fact, there were great areas of upland 
—not alone in the prairie country of northern 
Indiana and Illinois, but in the hilly regions 
within a hundred miles of the Ohio — that were 
almost treeless. On these unobstructed stretches 
grasses grew in profusion; and here roamed great 
herds of herbivorous animal-kind — deer and elk, 
and also buffalo, “filing in grave procession to 
‘drink at the rivers, plunging and snorting among 
the rapids and quicksands, rolling their huge bulk 
on the grass, rushing upon each other in hot en- 
counter, like champions under-shield.” Along the 
watercourses ducks, wild geese, cranes, herons, and 


other fowl sounded their harsh cries; gray squirrels, 
prairie chickens, and partridges the ,hunter found 
at every turn. 
Furthermore, the forests, as a rule, were not 
difficult to penetrate. The trees stood thick, but 
deer paths, buffalo roads, and Indian trails ramified 
in all directions, and sometimes were wide enough 


to allow two or three wagons to advance abreast. 
Mighty poplars, beeches, sycamores, and “‘sugars” 
pushed to great heights in quest of air and sunshine, 


and often their intertwining branches were locked 
solidly together by a heavy growth of grape or 
other vines, producing a canopy which during the 


at 


112 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


summer months permitted scarcely a ray of sun- 
light to reach the ground. There was, therefore, 


a notable absence of undergrowth. When a tree 
died and decayed, it fell apart piecemeal; it was 


with difficulty that woodsmen could wrest a giant 


oak or poplar from its moorings and bring it to the © 


ground, even by severing the trunk completely at 


the base. Here and there a clean swath was cut © 


through a forest, for perhaps dozens of miles, by a 
hurricane. This gave opportunity for the growth 
of a thicket of bushes and small trees, and such 
spots were equally likely to be the habitations of — 
wild beasts and the hiding-places of warlike bands" 
of redskins. 

There were always adventurous pioneers who 
scorned the settlements and went off with their 


families to fix their abodes in isolated places. But 


the average newcomer preferred to find a location 
in, or reasonably near, a settlement. The choice 


: 


’ 
‘ 
§ 


d 


of a site, whether by a company of immigrants — 
wishing to establish a settlement or by an individual 
settler, was a matter of much importance. Some | 


thought must be given to facilities for fortification 


against hostile natives. There must be an ade- 


quate supply of drinking-water; and the loca- 


tion of innumerable pioneer dwellings was selected — 


J 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 113 


with reference to free-flowing springs. Pasture 
land for immediate use was desirable; and of course 
the soil must be fertile. As a rule, the settler 
had the alternative of establishing himself on the 
lowlands along a stream and obtaining ground of 
the greatest productiveness, with the almost certain 
prospect of annual attacks of malaria, or of seek- 
ing the poorer but more healthful uplands. The 
attractions of the “bottoms” were frequently ir- 
resistible, and the “‘ague” became a feature of 
frontier life almost as inevitable as the proverbial 
“death and taxes.” 

The site selected, the next task was to clear a 
few acres of ground where the cabin was to stand. 
It was highly desirable to have a belt of open land 
as a protection against Indians and wild beasts; 
besides, there must be fields cleared for tillage. 
If the settler had neighbors, he was likely to have 
their aid in cutting away the densest growth of 
trees, and in raising into position the heavy tim- 
bers which formed the framework and walls of his 
cabin. Splendid oaks, poplars, and sycamores 
were cut into convenient lengths, and such as 
could not be used were rolled into great heaps 
and burned. Before sawmills were introduced 


lumber could not be manufactured; afterwards, 
8 


114 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


it became so plentiful as to have small market 
value. 

Almost without exception the frontier cabins had 
log walls; and they were rarely of larger size than 
single lengths would permit. On an average, they 
were twelve or fourteen feet wide and fifteen or 
eighteen feet long. Sometimes they were divided 
into two rooms, with an attic above; frequently 

_ there was but one room “downstairs.” The logs 
were notched together at the corners, and the spaces 
between them were filled with moss or clay or 
covered with bark. Rafters were affixed to the 
uppermost logs, and to one another, with wooden 
pins driven through auger holes. In earliest times 
the roof was of bark; later on, shingles were used, 
although nails were long unknown, and the shingles, 
after being laid in rows, were weighted down with 
straight logs. 

Sometimes there was only an earth floor. But 
as a rule “puncheons,” 7. e., thick, rough boards 
‘split from logs, were laid crosswise on round logs 
and were fastened with wooden pins. There was 
commonly but a single door, which was made 
also of puncheons and hung on wooden hinges. 

_A favorite device was to construct the door in 
“upper and lower sections, so as y make it possible, 


/ 
4 


* 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 115 


when there came a knock or a call from the out- 
side, to respond without offering easy entrance to 
an unwelcome visitor. In the days when there 
was considerable danger of Indian attacks no 
windows were constructed, for the householder 
could defend only one aperture. Later, square 
holes which could be securely barred at night and 
during cold weather were made to serve as win- 
dows. Flat pieces of sandstone, if they could be 
found, were used in building the great fireplace; 
otherwise, thick timbers heavily covered with clay 
were made to serve. In scarcely a cabin was there 
a trace of iron or glass; the whole could be con- 
structed with only two implements — an ax and 
an auger. 

Occasionally a family carried to its new home 
some treasured bits of furniture; but the difficulty 
of transportation was likely to be prohibitive, and - 
as a rule the cabins contained only such pieces of 
furniture as could be fashioned on the spot. A 
table was made by mounting a smoothed slab on 
four posts, set in auger holes. For seats short 
benches and three-legged stools, constructed after 
the manner of the tables, were in common use. 
Cooking utensils, food-supplies, seeds, herbs for 
medicinal purposes, and all sorts of household, 


116 _ THE OLD NORTHWEST 


appliances were stowed away on shelves, made by 
laying clapboards across wooden pins driven into 
the wall and mounting to the ceiling; although after 
sawed lumber came into use it was a matter of no 
great difficulty to construct chests and cupboards. 
Not infrequently the settler’s family slept on bear 
skins or blankets stretched on the floor. But 
crude bedsteads were made by erecting a pole with 
a fork in such a manner that other poles could be 
supported horizontally in this fork and by crevices 
in the walls. Split boards served as “slats” on 
which the bedding was spread. For a long time 
“‘ straw-ticks”’ — large cloth bags filled with straw 
or sometimes dry grass or leaves — were articles of 
luxury. Iron pots and knives were necessities 
which the wise householder carried with him from 
his eastern or southern home. In the West they 
were hard to obtain. The chief source of supply 
was the iron-manufacturing districts of Pennsyl- 
vania and Virginia, whence the wares were carried 
to the entrepédts of river trade by packhorses. 
The kitchen outfit of the average newcomer was 
completed with a few pewter dishes, plates, and 
spoons. But winter evenings were utilized in 
whittling out wooden bowls, trenchers, and noggins 
or cups, while gourds and hard-shelled squashes 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 117 


were turned to numerous uses. The commonest 
drinking utensil was a long-handled gourd. 

The dress of the pioneer long remained a curious 
cross between that of the Indians and that of the 
white people of the older sections. In earlier 
times the hunting-shirt — made of linsey, coarse 
nettle-bark linen, buffalo-hair, or even dressed 
deerskins — was universally worn by the men, 
together with breeches, leggings, and moccasins. 
The women and children were dressed in simple 
garments of linsey. In warm weather they went 
barefooted; in cold, they wore moccasins or coarse 
shoes. 

Rarely was there lack of food for these pioneer 
families. The soil was prodigal, and the forests 
abounded in game. The piéce de résistance of the 
backwoods menu was “hog an’ hominy”; that is 
to say, pork served with Indian corn which, after 
being boiled in lye to remove the hulls, had been 
soaked in clear water and cooked soft. ‘“Jobnny 
cake” and “pone” — two varieties of cornbread 
— were regularly eaten at breakfast and dinner. 
The standard dish for supper was cornmeal mush 
and milk. As cattle were not numerous, the 
housewife often lacked milk, in which case she 
fell back on her one never-failing resource — 


re 


118 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


hominy; or she served the mush with sweetened 
water, molasses, the gravy of fried meat, or even 
bear’s oil. Tea and coffee were long unknown, 
and when introduced they were likely to be scorned 
by the men as “‘slops” good enough perhaps for 
women and children. Vegetables the settlers grew 
in the garden plot which ordinarily adjoined the 
house, and thrifty families had also a “truck patch” 
in which they raised pumpkins, squashes, potatoes, 
beans, melons, and corn for “‘roasting ears.”” The 
forests yielded game, as well as fruits and wild 
grapes, and honey for sweetening. 

The first quality for which the life of the fron- 
tier called was untiring industry. It was possible, 
of course, to eke out an existence by hunting, 
fishing, petty trading, and garnering the fruits 
which Nature supplied without man’s assistance. 
And many pioneers in whom the roving instinct 
was strong went on from year to year in this hand~ 
to-mouth fashion. But the settler who expected 
to be a real home-builder, to gain some measure 
of wealth, to give his children a larger opportunity 
in life, must be prepared to work, to plan, to 
economize, and to sacrifice. The forests had to be 
felled; the great logs had to be rolled together and 
burned; crops of maize, tobacco, oats, and cane 


¥ 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 119 


needed to be planted, cultivated, and harvested; 
live stock to be housed and fed; fences and barns 
to be built; pork, beef, grain, whiskey, and other 
products to be prepared for market, and perhaps 
carried scores of miles to a place of shipment. 

All these things had to be done under conditions 
of exceptional difficulty. The settler never knew 
what night his place would be raided by maraud- 
~ ing redskins, who would be lenient indeed if they 
merely carried off part of his cattle or burned his 
barn. Any morning he might peer out of the 
“port hole” above the cabin door to see skulking 
figures awaiting their chance. Sickness, too, was 
a menace and a terror. Picture the horrors of 
isolation in times of emergency — wife or child 
suddenly taken desperately ill, and no physician 
within a hundred miles; husband or son hovering 
between life and death as the result of injury by a 
falling tree, a wild beast, a venomous snake, an 
accidental gun-shot, or the tomahawk of a prowl- 
ing Indian. Who shall describe the anxiety, the 
agony, which in some measure must have been 
the lot of every frontier family? The prosaic ill- 
nesses of the flesh were troublesome enough. On 
account of defective protection for the feet in wet 
weather, almost everybody had rheumatism; most 


120 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


settlers in the bottom-lands fell victims to fever — 


and ague at one time or another; even in the 
hill country few persons wholly escaped malarial 
disorders. ‘When this home-building and land- 
clearing is accomplished,” wrote one whose recollec- 
tions of the frontier were vivid, “‘a faithful picture 
would reveal not only the changes that have been 
wrought, but a host of prematurely broke-down 
men and women, besides an undue proportion rest- 
ing peacefully in country graveyards.” 

The frontiersman’s best friend was his trusty 
rifle. With it he defended his cabin and his crops 
from marauders, waged warfare on hostile red- 
skins, and obtained the game which formed an in- 
dispensable part of his food supply. At first the 
gun chiefly used on the border was the smooth- 
bored musket. But toward the close of the eigh- 
teenth century a gunsmith named Deckhard, liv- 
ing at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, began making 


4 


flintlock rifles of small bore, and in a short time ~ 


the“ Deckhard rifle” was to be found in the hands 
of almost every backwoodsman. The barrel was 
heavy and from three feet to three feet and a half 
in length, so that the piece, when set on the ground, 


reached at least to the huntsman’s shoulder. The 


bore was cut with twisting grooves, and was so 


. 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 121 


small that seventy bullets were required to weigh 
a pound. In loading, a greased linen “pate " 
was wrapped around the bullet; and only a small 
charge of powder was needed. The gun was 
heavy to carry and difficult to hold steadily upon a 
target; but it was economical of ammunition, and 
in the hands of the strong-muscled, keen-eyed, 
iron-nerved frontiersman it was an exceedingly 
‘accurate weapon, at all events within the ordinary 
limits of forest ranges. He was a poor marksman 
who could not shoot running deer or elk at a dis- 
tance of one hundred and fifty yards, and kill ducks 
and geese on the wing; and “boys of twelve hung 
their heads in shame if detected in hitting a squir- 
rel in any other part of the body than its head.” 
Life on the frontier was filled with hard work, 
danger, and anxiety. Yet it had its lighter side, 
and, indeed, it may be doubted whether people 
anywhere relished sport more keenly or found more 
pleasure in their everyday pursuits. The occa- 
sional family without neighbors was likely to suf- 
fer from loneliness. But few of the settlers were 
thus cut off, and as a rule community life was 
not only physically possible but highly developed. 
Many were the opportunities that served to bring 
together the frontiersmen, with their families, 


122 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


throughout a settlement or county. Foremost 
among such occasions were the log-rollings. 

After a settler had felled the thick-growing — 
trees on a plot which he desired to prepare for 
cultivation, he cut them, either by sawing or by 
burning, into logs twelve or fifteen feet in length. 
Frequently these were three, four, or even five 
feet in diameter, so that they could not be moved 
by one man, even with a team of horses. In such 
a situation, the settler would send word to his 
neighbors for miles around that on a given day 
there would be a log-rolling at his place; and when 
the day arrived six, or a dozen, or perhaps a score, 
of sturdy men, with teams of horses and yokes of 
oxen, and very likely accompanied by members 
of their families, would arrive on the scene with 
merry shouts of anticipation. By means of hand- 
spikes and chains drawn by horses or oxen, the 
great timbers were pushed, rolled, and dragged 
into heaps, and by nightfall the field lay open 
and ready for the plough — requiring, at the most, 
only the burning of the huge piles that had been 
gathered. 

Without loss of time the fires were started; and 
as darkness came on, the countryside glowed as 
with the light of a hundred huge torches. The 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 123 


skies were reddened, and as a mighty oak or poplar 
log toppled and fell to the ground, showers of 
sparks lent the scene volcanic splendor. Bats and 
owls and other dim-eyed creatures of the night 
flew about in bewilderment, sometimes bumping 
hard against fences or other objects, sometimes 
plunging madly into the flames and contributing 
to the general holocaust. For days the great 
~ fires were kept going, until the last remnants of 
this section of the once imposing forest were con- 
sumed; while smoke hung far out over the coun- 
try, producing an atmospheric effect like that of 
Indian summer. 

- Heavy exertion called for generous refreshment, 
and on these occasions the host could be depended 
on to provide an abundance of food and. drink. 
The little cabin could hardly be made to accommo- 
date so many guests, even in relays. Accordingly, 
a long table was constructed with planks and tres- 
tles in a shady spot, and at noon — and perhaps 
. again in the evening — the women folk served a 
meal which at least made up in “staying quali- 
ties”’ what it lacked in variety or delicacy. The 
principal dish was almost certain to be “‘pot-pie,” 
consisting of boiled turkeys, geese, chickens, 
grouse, veal, or venison, with an abundance of 


124 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


dumplings. This, with cornbread and milk, met 
the demands of the occasion; but if the host was 
able to furnish a cask of rum, his generosity was 
thoroughly appreciated. 

In the autumn, corn-huskings were a favorite 
form of diversion, especially for the young people; 
and in the early spring neighbors sometimes came 
together to make maple sugar. A wedding was 
an important event and furnished diversion of 
a different kind. From distances of twenty and 
thirty miles people came to attend the ceremony, 
and often the festivities extended over two or 
three days. Even now there was work to be done; 
for as a rule the neighbors organized a house- 


> 


building “bee, ’ and before separating for their 
homes they constructed a cabin for the newly 
wedded pair, or at all events brought it sufficiently 
near completion to be uit by the young hus- 
band himself. 

Even after a day of heavy toil at log-rolling, the 
young men and boys bantered one another into 
foot races, wrestling matches, shooting contests, 
and other feats of strength or skill. And if a 
fiddler could be found, the day was sure to end 
with a “hoe-down” —a dance that “made even 
the log-walled house tremble.” No corn-husking 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 125 


or wedding was complete without dancing, al- 
though members of certain of the more strait- 
laced religious sects already frowned upon the 
diversion. 

Rough conditions of living made rough men, and 
we need not be surprised by the testimony of Eng- 
lish and American travelers, that the frontier had 
more than its share of boisterous fun, rowdyism, 
_ lawlessness, and crime. The taste for whiskey 
was universal, and large quantities were manu- 
factured in rude stills, not only for shipment down 
the Mississippi, but for local consumption. Fre- 
quenters of the river-town taverns called for their 
favorite brands — “‘Race Horse,”’ “‘Moral Sua- 
sion,” “Vox Populi,” “Pig and Whistle,” or 
“Split Ticket,” as the case might be. But the 
average frontiersman cared little for the niceties 
of color or flavor so long as his liquor was cheap 
and produced the desired effect. Hard work and 
a monotonous diet made him continually thirsty; 
and while ordinarily he drank only water and 
milk at home, at the taverns and at social gather- 
ings he often succumbed to potations which left 
him in happy drunken forgetfulness of daily 
hardships. House-raisings and weddings often 
became orgies marked by quarreling and fighting 


126 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


and terminating in brutal and bloody brawls. 
Foreign visitors to the back country were led to 
comment frequently on the number of men who had 
lost an eye or an ear, or had been otherwise maimed 
in these rough-and-tumble contests. 

The great majority of the frontiersmen, how- 
ever, were sober, industrious, and law-abiding 1 folk; 
and they were by no means beyond the pale of 
religion. On account of the numbers of Scotch- 
Trish, Presbyterianism was in earlier days the 
principal creed, although there were many Catho- 
lics and adherents of the Reformed Dutch and 
German churches, and even a few Episcopalians. 
About the beginning of the nineteenth century 
sectarian ascendancy passed to the Methodists 
and Baptists, whose ranks were rapidly recruited 
by means of one of the most curious and char- 
acteristic of backwoods institutions, the camp- 
meeting “revival.” The years 1799 and 1800 
brought the first of the several great waves of 


religious excitement by which the West — espe- - 


cially Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee — 
was periodically swept until within the memory of 
men still living. 

Camp-meetings were usually planned and man- 
aged by Methodist circuit-riders or Baptist itiner- 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 127 


ant preachers, who hesitated not to carry their 
work into the remotest and most dangerous parts 
of the back country. When the news went abroad 
that such a meeting was to take place, people 
flocked to the scene from far and near, in wagons, 
on horseback, and on foot. Pious men and women 
came for the sake of religious fellowship and in- 
spiration; others not so pious came from motives 
_ of curiosity, or even to share in the rough sport 
for which the scoffers always found opportunity. 
The meeting lasted days, and even weeks; and 
preaching, praying, singing, “testifying,” and 
“exhorting” went on almost without intermission. 
“The preachers became frantic in their exhorta- 
tions; men, women, and children, falling as if 
in catalepsy, were laid out in rows. Shouts, in- 
coherent singing, sometimes barking as of an un- 
reasoning beast, rent the air. Convulsive leaps 
and dancing were common; so, too, ; jerking,’ 
stakes being driven into the ground to jerk by, 
the subjects of the fit grasping them as they 
writhed and grimaced in their contortions. The 
world, indeed, seemed demented.”* Whole com- 
munities sometimes professed conversion; and it 
was considered a particularly good day’s work 
«Hosmer, Short History of the Mississippi V alley, p. 116. 


128 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


when notorious disbelievers or wrong-doers — 
“hard 1 bats,” in the phraseology of the frontier — 
or gangs of young rowdies whose only object in 
coming was to commit acts of deviltry, succumbed 
to the peculiarly compelling influences of the oc- 
casion. 


In this sort of religion there was, of course, 


much wild emotionalism and sheer hysteria; and 


there were always people to whom it was repellent. 
Backsliders were lla and the person who 
“fell from grace” was more than likely to revert 
to his earlier wickedness in its grossest forms. 
None the less, in a rough, unlearned, and material- 
istic society such spiritual shakings-up were bound 
to yield much permanent good. Most western 


people, at one time or another, came under,the 


influence of the Methodist and Baptist revivals; 


and from the men and women who were drawn by 
them to a new and larger view of life were re- 
cruited the hundreds of little congregations whose 
meeting-houses in the course of time dotted the 
hilis and plains from the Alleghanies to the Missis- 
sippi. As for the hard-working, honest-minded 
frontier preachers who braved every sort of danger 
in the performance of their great task, the West 
owes them an eternal debt of gratitude. In the 


tr 


‘N 


PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS 129 


words of Roosevelt, “‘their prejudices and narrow 
dislikes, their raw vanity and sullen distrust of 
all who were better schooled than they, count 
for little when weighed against their intense ear- 
nestness and heroic self-sacrifice.” 

Nor was education neglected. Many of the set- 
tlers, especially those who came from the South, 
were illiterate. But all who made any pretense of 
respectability were desirous of giviug their children 
~ an opportunity to learn to read and write. Accord- 
ingly, wherever half a dozen families lived reason- 
ably close together, a log schoolhouse was sure to be 
found. In the days before public funds existed for 
the support of education the teachers were paid 
directly, and usually in produce, by the patrons. 
Sometimes a wandering pedagogue would find his 
way into a community and, being engaged to give 
instruction for two or three months during the 
winter, would “‘ board around” among the residents 
and take such additional pay as he could get. More 
often, some one of the settlers who was fortunate 
enough to possess the rudiments of an education 
undertook the réle of schoolmaster in the interval 
between the autumn corn-gathering and the spring 
ploughing and planting. 

Instruction rarely extended beyond the three R’s; 


9 


. 


130 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


but occasionally a newcomer who had somewhere 
picked up a smattering of algebra, Latin, or as- 
tronomy stirred the wonder, if not also the sus- 
picion, of the neighborhood. Schoolbooks were 
few and costly; crude slates were made from pieces 


of shale; pencils were fashioned from varicolored 
soapstone found in the beds of small streams. No 
frontier picture is more familiar or more pleasing 
than that of the farmer’s boy sitting or lying on the 
floor during the long winter evening industriously 
tracing by firelight or by candlelight the proverb 
or quotation assigned him as an exercise in pen- 


- manship, or wrestling with the intricacies of least 


common denominators and highest common divi- 
sors. Itis in such a setting that we get our first 
glimpse of the greatest of western Americans, 


» Abraham Lincoln. 


CHAPTER VIII 
TECUMSEH 


Waynw’s victory in 1795, followed by the Treaty 
of Fort Greenville, gave the Northwest welcome 
relief from Indian warfare, and within four years 
the Territory was ready to be advanced to the 
second of the three grades of government provided 
for it in the Ordinance of 1787. A Legislature was 
set up at Cincinnati, and in due time it proceeded 
to the election of a delegate to Congress. Choice 
fell on a young man whose name was destined to a 
permanent place in the country’s history. William _ 
Henry Harrison was the son of a signer of the 
Declaration of Independence, the scion of one of 
Virginia’s most honored families. Entering the 
army in 1791, he had served as an aide-de-camp 
to Wayne in the campaign which ended at Fallen 
Timbers, and at the time of his election was act- 
ing as Secretary of the Territory and ex-officio 


e ce eeeentnenti eee 
Lieutenant-Governor. 
ee 
181 


132 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


Although but twenty-six years of age, and with- 
out a vote in the House of Representatives, Harri- 
son succeeded in procuring from Congress in 1800 
an act dividing the Territory into two distinct 
‘governments,’ separated by the old Greenville 
treaty line as far as Fort Recovery and then by a 
line running due north to the Canadian boundary. 
The division to the east was named Ohio, that to 
the west Indiana; and Harrison was made Governor 
of the latter, with his residence at Vincennes. In 
1802 the development of the back country was 
freshly emphasized by the admission of Ohio as a 
State. 

Meanwhile the equilibrium between the white 
man and the red again became unstable. In the 
Treaty of 1795 the natives had ceded only southern 
Ohio, southeastern Indiana, and a few other small 
and scattered areas. Northward and westward, 
their country stretched to the Lakes and the Mis- 
sissippi, unbroken except by military posts and 
widely scattered settlements; and title to all of this 
territory had been solemnly guaranteed. As late 
as 1800 the white population of what is now In- 
diana was practically confined to Clark’s Grant, 
near the falls of the Ohio, and a small region around 
Vincennes. It numbered not more than twenty- 


TECUMSEH 133 


five hundred persons. But thereafter immigration 
from the seaboard States, and from the nearer lands 
of Kentucky and Tennessee, set in on a new scale, 
By 1810 Indiana had a white population of twenty- 
five thousand, and the cabins of the energetic 
settlers dotted river valleys and hillsides never 
before trodden by white man. 

In this new rush of pioneers the rights of the 
- Indians received scant consideration. Hardy and 
_ well-armed Virginians and Kentuckians broke 
across treaty boundaries and possessed themselves 
of fertile lands to which they had no valid claim. 
White hunters trespassed far and wide on Indian 
territory, until by 1810 great regions, which a quar- 
ter of a century earlier abounded in deer, bear, 
and buffalo, were made as useless for Indian pur- 
poses as barren wastes. Although entitled to the 
protection of law in his person and property, the 
native was cheated and overawed at every turn; 
he might even be murdered with impunity. Abra- 
ham Lincoln’s uncle thought it a virtuous act to 
shoot an Indian on sight, and the majority of 
pioneers agreed with him. 


> 


“T can tell at once,’ wrote Harrison in 1801, 
*‘upon looking at an Indian whom I may chance to 


meet whether he belongs to a neighboring or a more 


134 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


distant tribe. The latter is generally well-clothed, 
healthy, and vigorous; the former half-naked, 
filthy, and enfeebled by intoxication, and many of 
them without arms excepting a knife, which they 
carry for the most villainous purposes.” The 
stronger tribes perceived quite as clearly as did 
the Governor the ruinous effects of contact between 
the two peoples, and the steady destruction of the — 
border warriors became a leading cause of discon- 
tent. Congress had passed laws intended to pre- 
vent the sale of spiritucus liquors to the natives, 
but the courts had construed these measures to be 
operative only outside the bounds of States and 
organized Territories, and in the great unorganized 
‘Northwest the laws were not heeded, and the ruin-_ 
.. ous traffic went on uninterrupted. Harrison re- 
‘ported that when there were only six hundred war- 
riors on the Wabash the annual consumption of 
whiskey there was six thousand gallons, and that 
killing each other in drunken brawls had“becomeso 
customary that it was no longer thought criminal.” 
Most exasperating, however, from the red man’s 
point of view was the insatiable demand of the 
newcomers for land. In the years 1803, 1804, and 
1805 Harrison made treaties with the remnants of 
the Miami, Eel River, Piankeshaw, and Delaware 


TECUMSEH 135 


‘tribes — characterized by him as “‘a body of the 
most depraved wretches on earth”? — which gained 
for the settlers a strip of territory fifty miles wide 
south of White River. ; and in 1809 he similarly ac- 
quired, by the Treaty of Fort Wayne, three million 
acres, in tracts which cut into the heart of the In- 
dian country for almost a hundred miles up both 
banks of the-Wabash. The Wabash valley was 
_. richer in game than any other region south of Lake 
Michigan, and its loss was keenly felt by the In- 
dians./ Indeed, it was mainly the cession of 1809 
that Pht once more to a crisis the long-brewing 
difficulties with the nee 

About the year 1768 the’ Creek squaw of a 
Shawnee warrior gave birth at one time to three 
boys, in the vicinity of the present city of Spring- 
field, Ohio.* One of the three barely left his name 
in aboriginal annals. A second, known as Laule- 
wasikaw, “‘the man with the loud voice,” poses in 
the pages of history as “the prophet.” The third 
brother was Tecumseh, ‘“‘the wild-cat that leaps 
upon its prey,” or “the shooting star,” as the 

t Authorities differ as to the facts of Tecumseh’s birth. His earliest 
biographer, Benjamin Drake, holds that he was “‘ wholly a Shawanoe”’ 
and that he was a fourth child, the Prophet and another son being 


twins. William Henry Harrison spoke of Tecumseh’s mother as a 


Creek. 


— 


136 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


name has been translated. He is described as a — 
tall, handsome warrior — daring and energetic, of 
fluent and persuasive speech, given to deep reflec- 
tion, an implacable hater of the whiteman. Other 
qualities he possessed which were not so common 
among his people. He had perfect self-command, 
a keen insight into human motives and purposes, 
and an exceptional capacity to frame. plans and 
organize men ‘to carry them out. His crowning 
scheme for bringing together the tribes of the Mid- 
dle West into a grand democratic confederacy to 
regulate land cessions and other dealings with the 
whites stamps him as perhaps the most states- 
manlike member of his race. 

While yet hardly more than a boy, Tecumseh 
seems to have been stirred to deep indignation by 


the persistent encroachment of the whites upon the © 


hunting-grounds of his fathers. The cessions of 
1804 and 1805 he specially resented, and it is not 
unlikely. that they clinched the decision of the 
young warrior to take up the task which Pontiac 


had left unfinished. At all events, the plan was — 


soon well in hand. A less far-seeing leader would 
have been content to call the scattered tribes to a 
momentary alliance with a view to a general up- 
rising against the invaders. But Tecumseh’s pur- 


E 


TECUMSEH 


poses ran far deeper. All of the Indian peoples, of 
whatever name or relationships, from the Lakes to 
the Gulf and from the Alleghanies to the Rockies, 
were to be organized in a single, permanent con- 
federacy. This union, furthermore, was to con- con- 
"sist, not of chieftains, but of the warriors; and its 
governing body was to be a warriors’ congress, an 
organ of genuine popular rule. Joint ownership 
of all Indian lands was to be assumed by the con- 
. federacy, and the piecemeal cession of territory by 
petty tribal chiefs, under pressure of government 
agents, was to be made impossible. Only thus, 
Tecumseh argued, could the red man hope to hold 
_ his own in the uneven contest that was going 
on. 

The plan was brilliant, even though impractic- 
able. Naturally, it did not appeal instantly to the 
chieftains, for it took away tribal independence 
and undermined the chieftain’s authority. Be- 
sides, its author was noi a chief, and had no sane- 
tion of birth or office. Its success was dependent on 
the building of an intertribal association such as 
Indian history had never known. And while there 

_ was nothing im it which contravened the professed 
- policy of the United States, it ran counter to the 
irrepressible tendency of the advancing white 


THE OLD NORTHWEST 


_vpulation to spread at will over the great western 
domain. 

By these obstacles Tecumseh was not deterred. 
With indefatigable zeal he traveled from one end 
of the country to the other, arguing with chiefs, 
making fervid speeches to assembled warriors, and 
in every possible manner impressing his people with 
his great idea. The Prophet went with him; and 
when the orator’s logic failed to carry conviction, 
the medicine-man’s imprecations were relied upon 
to save the day. Events, too, played into their 
hands. The Leopard-Chesapeake affair,* in 1807, 
roused strong feeling. in the West and prompted 
the Governor-General of Canada to begin intrigues 
looking to an alliance with the redskins in the event 
of war. And when, late in the same year, Gover- 


nor Hull of Michigan Territory indiscreetly ne-_ 


gotiated a new land cession at Detroit, the northern 
tribes at once joined Tecumseh’s league, mutter- 
ing threats to slay the chiefs by whom the cession 
had been sanctioned. 

In the spring of 1808 Tecumseh and his brother 
carried their plans forward another step by tak- 
ing up their residence at a point in central Indiana 


See Jefferson and his Colleagues, by Allen Johnson (in The Chron- 
icles of America). 


TECUMSEH 139 


where Tippecanoe Creek flows into the Wabash 
River. The place — which soon got the name 
of the Prophet’s Town — was almost equidistant 
from Vincennes, Fort Wayne, and Fort Dearborn; 
from it the warriors could paddle their canoes to 
any part of the Ohio or the Mississippi, and with 
only a short portage, to the waters of the Maumee 
and the Great Lakes. The situation was, therefore, 
strategic. A village was laid out, and the popu- 
lation was soon numbered by the hundred. Live 
stock was acquired, agriculture was begun, the use 
of whiskey was prohibited, and every indication 
was afforded of peaceful intent. 

Seasoned frontiersmen, however, were suspicious. 
Reports came in that the Tippecanoe villagers en- 
gaged daily in warlike exercises; rumor had it that 
emissaries of the Prophet were busily stirring the 
tribes, far and near, torebellion. Governor Harri- 
son was not a man to be easily frightened, but he 
became apprehensive, and proposed to satisfy him- 
self by calling Tecumseh into conference. 

The interview took place at Vincennes, and was 
extended over a period of two weeks. There was 
a show of firmness, yet of good will, on both sides. 
The Governor counseled peace, orderliness, and 
industry; the warrior guest professed a desire to 


140 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


be a friend to the United States, but said frankly 
that if the country continued to deal with the 
tribes singly in the purchase of land he would — 
be obliged to ally himself with Great Britain. To 
Harrison’s admonition that the redskins should 
leave off drinking whiskey — “that it was not 
made for them, but for the white people, who alone 
knew how to use it”” — the visitor replied pointedly 
by asking that the sale of liquor be stopped. 

Notwithstanding the tenseness of the situation, 
Harrison negotiated the land cessions of 1809, 
which cost the Indians their last valuable hunting- 
grounds in Indiana. The powerful Wyandots 
promptly joined Tecumseh’s league, and war was 
made inevitable. Delay followed only because the 
Government at Washington postponed the military 
occupation of the new purchase, and because the 
. British authorities in Canada, desiring Tecumseh’s 
confederacy to attain its maximum strength before 
the test came, urged the redskins to wait. 

For two more years — while Great Britain and 
the United States hovered on the brink of war 
— preparations continued. Tribe after tribe in 
Indiana and Illinois elected Tecumseh as their 
chief, alliances reached to regions as remote as 
Florida. In 1810 another conference took place at 


TECUMSEH 141 


Vincennes; and this time, notwithstanding Har- 

- rison’s request that not more than thirty redskins 

should attend, four hundred came in Tecumseh’s 
train, fully armed. 


A large portico in front of the Governor’s house 
[says a contemporary account] had been prepared for 
the purpose with seats, as well for the Indians as for 
the citizens who were expected to attend. When Te- 
cumseh came from his camp, with about forty of his 
warriors, he stood off, and on being invited by the 
Governor, through an interpreter, to take his seat, re- 
fused, observing that he wished the council to be held 
under the shade of some trees in front of the house. 
When it was objected that it would be troublesome to 
remove the seats, he replied that ‘“‘it would only be 
necessary to remove those intended for the whites — 
that the red men were accustomed to sit upon the 
earth, which was their mother, and that they were 
always happy to recline upon her bosom.’’* 


The chieftain’s equivocal conduct aroused fresh 
suspicion, but he was allowed to proceed with the 
oration which he had come to deliver. Freely 
rendered, the speech ran, in part, as follows: 


I have made myself what I am; and I would that I could 
make the red people as great as the conceptions of my 
mind, when I think of the Great Spirit that rules over 
all. I would not then come to Governor Harrison to ask 
him to tear the treaty [of 1809]; but I would say to him, 


t James Hall, Memoir of William Henry Harrison, pp. 113-114. 


142 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


Brother, you marae | to return to your own country. 
Once there was no white man in all this country: then 
it belonged to red men,children of the same parents, 
placed on it by the Great Spirit to keep it, to travel over 
it, to eat its fruits, and fill it with the same race — once 
a happy race, but now made miserable by the white 
people, who are never contented, but always encroach- 
ing. They have driven us from the great salt water, 
forced us over the mountains, and would shortly push us 
into the lakes — but we are determined to go no further. 
The only way to stop this evil is for all red men to unite 
in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it 
was at first, and should be now —for it never was 
divided, but belongs to all. . . . Any sale not made 
by all is not good. 


In his reply Harrison declared that the Indians 
were not one nation, since the Great Spirit had 
“put six different tongues in their heads,” and 
argued that the Indiana lands had been in all re- 


spects properly bought from their rightful owners. ' 


Tecumseh’s blood boiled under this denial of his 
main contention, and with the ery, “It is false,” 
he gave a signal to his warriors, who sprang to their 
feet and seized their war-clubs. For a moment an 
armed clash was imminent. But Harrison’s cool 
~ manner enabled him to remain master of the situ- 


ation, and a well-directed rebuke sent the chieftain 


and his followers to their quarters. 


- 


TECUMSEH 143 


On the following morning TecupsSeh apologized 
for his impetuosity and i cee confefence 
' be renewed. The requesi/was granted, and again 
the forest leader pres éd4or an abandonment of the 
policy of purchasing land from the separate tribes. 
Harrison told him that the question was for the 
President, rather than for him, to decide. “As_ 
the great chief is to determine the matter,” re- 
‘ sponded the visitor grimly, “I hope the Great 
Spirit will put sense enough into his head to induce 
him to direct you to give up this land. It is true 
he is so far off he will not be injured by the war. 
He may sit still in his town, and drink his wine, 
while you and I will have to fight it out.” 

Still the clash was averted. Once more, in the 
summer of 1811, Tecumseh appeared at Vincennes, 
and again the deep issue between the two peoples 
was threshed out as fruitlessly as before. An- 
nouncing his purpose to visit the southern tribes 
to unite them with those of the North in a peace- 
ful confederacy, the chieftain asked that dur- 
ing his absence all matters be left as they were, 
and promised that upon his return he would go 
to see President Madison and “settle everything 
_ with him.” 

Naturally, no pledge of the kind was given, and 


144 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


no sooner had Tecumseh and twenty of his warriors 
started southward on their mission to the Creeks — 
than Harrison began preparations to end the men- 
ace that had been so long hanging over the western 
country. Troops were sent to Harrison; and vol- 
unteers were called for. As fast as volunteers 
came in they were sent up to the Wabash to take 


possession of the new purchase. Reinforcements 
arrived from Pittsburgh and from Kentucky, and 
in a short while the Governor was able to bring 
together at Fort Harrison, near the site of the pres- 
ent city of Terre-Haute, twenty-four companies 
of regulars, militia, and Indians, aggregating about 
nine hundred well-armed men. 

Late in October this army, commanded by Har- 
rison in person, set forth for the destruction of the 4 
Tippecanoe rendezvous. On the way stray red- 
skins were encountered, but the advance was not 
resisted, and to his surprise Harrison was enabled 
to lead his forces unmolested to within a few 
hundred yards of the Prophet's headquarters. 
Emissaries now came saying that the invasion was 
wholly unexpected, professing peaceful intentions, 
and asking for a parley. Harrison had no idea | 
that anything could be settled by negotiation, but — 
‘he preferred to wait until the next day to make an | 


4 


TECUMSEH 145 


attack; accordingly he agreed to a council, and the 
army went into camp for the night on an oak- 
covered knoll about a mile northwest of the village. 
No entrenchments were thrown up, but the troops 
were arranged in a triangle to conform to the con- 
tour of the hill, and a hundred sentinels under 
experienced officers were stationed around the 
camp-fires. The night was cold, and rain fell at 
intervals, although at times the moon age 
brightly through the flying clouds. 

The Governor was well aware of the proneness 
of the Indians to early morning attacks, so that 
about four o’clock on the 7th of November he rose 
to call the men to parade. He had barely pulled 
on his boots when the forest stillness was broken 
by the crack of a rifle at the farthest angle of the 
camp, and instantly the Indian yell, followed by 
a fusillade, told that a general attack had begun. 
Before the militiamen could emerge in force from 
their tents, the sentinel line was broken and the 
red warriors were pouring into the enclosure. Des- 
perate fighting ensued, and when time for reloading 
failed, it was rifle butt and bayonet against toma- 
hawk and scalping knife in hand-to-hand combat. 
For two hours the battle raged in the darkness, and 
only when daylight came were the troops able to 


146 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


charge the redskins, dislodge them from behind the 
trees, and drive them to a safe distance in the 
neighboring swamp. Sixty-one of Harrison’s offi- 
cers and men were killed or mortally wounded; 
one hundred and twenty-seven others suffered 
serious injury. The Governor himself probably 
owed his life to the circumstance that in the con- 
fusion he mounted a bay horse instead of his own 
white stallion, whose rider was shot early in the 
contest. 

The Indian losses were small, and for twenty- 
four hours Harrison’s forces kept their places, 
hourly expecting another assault. “Night,” wrote 
one of the men subsequently, “found every man 
mounting guard, without food, fire, or light and 
in a drizzling rain. The Indian dogs, during the 
dark hours, produced frequent alarms by prowling 
in search of carrion about the sentinels.”” There be- 
ing no further sign of hostilities, early on the 8th of 
November a body of mounted riflemen set out for 
the Prophet’s village, which they found deserted. 
The place had evidently been abandoned in haste, 
for nothing — not even a fresh stock of English 
guns and powder — had been destroyed or carried 
off. After confiscating much-needed provisions 
and other valuables, Harrison ordered the village 


TECUMSEH . 147 


to be burned. Then, abandoning camp furniture 
and private baggage to make room in the wagons 
for the wounded, he set out on the return trip to 
Vincennes. A company was left at Fort Harrison, 
and the main force reached the capital on the 18th 
of November. 

Throughout the western country the news of 
the battle was received with delight, and it was 
fondly believed that the backbone of Tecumseh’s _ 
conspiracy was broken. It was even supposed that 
the indomitable chieftain and his brother would 
be forthwith surrendered by the Indians to the 
authorities of the United States. Harrison was 
acclaimed as a deliverer. The legislatures of Ken- 
tucky, Indiana, and Illinois formally thanked him 
for his services; and if, as his Federalist enemies 
charged, he had planned the whole undertaking 
with a view to promoting his personal fortunes, he 
ought to have been satisfied with the result. It | 
was the glamour of Tippecanoe that three decades 
afterwards carried him into the President’s chair. 

In precipitating a clash while Tecumseh, the 
master-mind of the fast-growing confederacy, was 
absent, the Prophet committed a capital blunder. 
When reproached by his warriors, he declared that 
all would have gone well but for the fact that on the 


148 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


night before the battle his squaw had profanely 
touched the pot in which his magic charms were 
brewed, so that the spell had been broken! The 
explanation was not very convincing, and ominous 
murmurings were heard. Before the end of the 
year, however, word came to Vincennes that the 
crafty magician was back at Tippecanoe, that 
the village had been rebuilt, and that the lives of 
the white settlers who were pouring into the new 
purchase were again endangered. 

Still more alarming was the news of Tecumseh’s 
return in January, 1812, from a very successful 
visit to the Creeks, Choctaws, and Cherokees. He 
began by asking leave to make his long-projected 
visit to Washington to obtain peace from the Presi- 
dent, and he professed deep regret for “‘the unfor- 
tunate transaction that took place between the 
white people and a few of our young men at our vil- 
lage.” To the British agent at Amherstburg he 
declared that had he been on the spot there would 
have been no fighting at Tippecanoe. It is reason- 
able to suppose that in this case there would have 
been, at all events, no Indian attack; for Tecumseh 
was thoroughly in sympathy with the British plan, 
which was to unite and arm the natives, but to 
prevent a premature outbreak. The chieftain’s 


TECUMSEH 149 


presence, however, would hardly have deterred 
Harrison from carrying out his decision to break up 
the Tippecanoe stronghold. 

The spring of 1812 brought an ominous renewal 
of depredations. Two settlers were murdered 
within three miles of Fort Dearborn; an entire fam-— 

_ ily was massacred but five miles from Vincennes; (\ 
from all directions came reports of other bloody ve 
deeds. The frontier was thrown into panic. A 

. general uprising was felt to be impending; even 
Vincennes was thought to be in danger. ‘Most of 
the citizens of this country,” reported Harrison, 
on the 6th of May, “‘have abandoned their farms, 
and taken refuge in such temporary forts as they 
have been able to construct.” Scores fled to Ken- 
tucky and to even more distant regions. 

Tecumseh continued to assert his friendship for 
his “white brothers” and to treat the battle at 
Tippecanoe as a matter of no moment. The mur- | 
ders on the frontier he declared to be the work of the | 
Potawatomi, who were not under his control, and 
for whose conduct he had no excuse. But it was | 
noted that he made no move to follow up his pro- | 
fessed purpose to visit Washington in quest of! 
peace, and that he put forth no effort to restrain his 
over-zealous allies. It was plain enough that he 


150 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


was simply awaiting a signal from Canada, and 
that, as the commandant at Fort Wayne tersely 
reported, if the country should have a war with 
Great Britain, it must be prepared for an Indian 
war as well. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE NEW WEST 


THE spring of 1812 thus found the back country 
in a turmoil, and it was with a real sense of relief 
that the settlers became aware of the American de- 
claration of war against Great Britain on the 18th 
of June. More than once Governor Harrison had 
asked for authority to raise an army with which 
to “scour”? the Wabash territory. In the fear 
that such a step would drive the redskins into the 
arms of the British, the War Department had with- 
held its consent. Now that the ban was lifted, the 
people could expect the necessary measures to be 
taken for their defense. In no part of the country 
was the war more popular; nowhere did the mass 
of the able-bodied population show greater eager- 
ness to take the field. 

According to official returns, the Westerners 
were totally unprepared for the contest. There 


were but five garrisoned posts between the Ohio 
1. 
Ae4 


152 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


and the Canadian frontier. Fort Harrison had 
fifty men, Fort Wayne eighty-five, Fort Dearborn - 
fifty-three, Fort Mackinac eighty-eight, and Detroit 
one hundred and twenty — a total force of fewer 
than four hundred. The entire standing army 
of the United States numbered but sixty-seven 
hundred men, and it was obvious that the trans- 
Alleghany population would be obliged to carry 
almost alone the burden of their own defense. 
The task would not be easy; for General Brock, 
commanding in upper Canada, had at least two 
thousand regulars and, as soon as hostilities be- 
gan, was joined by Tecumseh and many hundred 
redskins. 

While the question of the war was still under de- 
bate in Congress, President Madison made a re- 
quisition on Ohio for twelve hundred militia, and 
in early summer the Governors of Indiana and 
Illinois called hundreds of volunteers into service. 
Leaving their families as far as possible under the 
protection of stockades or of the towns, the pa- 
triots flocked to the mustering-grounds; many, like 
Cincinnatus of old, deserted the plough in mid- 
field. Guns and ammunition in sufficient quan- 
tity were lacking; even tents ‘and blankets were 
often wanting. But enthusiasm ran high, and only 


THE WAR OF 1812 


capable leadership was needed to make of these 
frontier forces, once they were properly equipped, 
a formidable foe. 

The story of the leaders and battles of the war in 
the West has been told in an earlier volume of this 
series.t It will be necessary here merely to call to 
mind the stages through which this contest passed, 
as a preliminary to a glimpse of the conditions 
~ under which Westerners fought and of the new 
position into which their section of the country 
was brought when peace was restored. So far 
as the regions north of the Ohio were concerned, 
the war developed two phases. The first began 
with General William Hull’s expedition from Ohio 
against Fort Malden for the relief of Detroit, and 
it ended with the humiliating surrender of that 
important post, together with the forced abandon- 
ment of Forts Dearborn and Mackinac, so that the 
Wabash and Maumee became, for all practical 
purposes, the country’s northern boundary. This 
was a story of complete and bitter defeat. The 
second phase began likewise with a disaster — the 
needless loss of a thousand men on the Raisin River, 
near Detroit. Yet it succeeded in bringing Wil- 


t See The Fight for a Free Sea, by Ralph D. Paine (in The Chronicles 
of America). 


THE OLD NORTHWEST 


.m Henry Harrison into chief command, and it 


ended in Commodore Perry’s signal victory on Lake ~ : 


Erie and Harrison’s equally important defeat of 
the disheartened British land forces on the banks 
of the Thames River, north of the Lake. At this 
Battle of the Thames perished Tecumseh, who in 
point of fact was the real force behind the British 
campaigns in the West. Tradition describes him 
on the eve of the battle telling his comrades that 
his last day had come, solemnly stripping off his 
British uniform before going into battle, and ar- 
raying himself in the fighting costume of his own 
people. 

For two-thirds of the time, the war went badly 


for the Westerners, and only at the end did it turn © 


out to be a brilliant success. The reasons for the 
dreary succession of disasters are not difficult to 
discover. Foremost among them is the charac- 
ter of the troops and officers. The material from 
which the regiments were recruited was intrinsi- 
cally good, but utterly raw and untrained. The 
men could shoot well; they had great powers of 
endurance; and they were brave. But there the 
list of their military virtues ends. 

The scheme of military organization relied upon 
throughout the West was that of the volunteer 


4 THE WAR OF isi2 Ee 

militia In periods of ordinary Indian warfare 
the system served its purpose fairly well. Under 
stern necessity, the self-willed, mdependenceloving 
backwoodsmen could be broughi to act together 
for a few weeks or months; but they had litile sys- 
tematic training, and their impatience of restramt 
prevented the building up of any real discipline. 
There were periodic musters for company or regi- 
‘mental doll. But, as a rule. dnill duty was not 
taken seriously. oo ee. 
port; and those who came were likely to give most 
of their time ito horse-races, wresiling-maiches, 
shooting contests — not to mention drinking and 
brawling — which tumed ithe occasion into mere 
merrymaking or disorder. The men brought few 
gums, and when drills were actually held these 
soldiers in the making contented themselves with 
paradmg with cormsialks over their shoulders. 
“(Cornstalk drill” thus became a frontier epithet ef 
derision. It goes without saying thai these troaps 
were chosen by the men, frequenily with more re- 
standing in the community than for their capacity 
_ as military commanders; nor were the higher offi- 
_ ees, appointed by the chief executive of territory, 


THE OLD NORTHWEST 


state, or nation, more likely to be chosen with a 
view to their military fitness. 

So it came about, as Roosevelt has said, that the 
frontier people of the second generation “had no — 
military training whatever, and though they pos- 
sessed a skeleton militia organization, they derived — 
no benefit from it, because their officers were 
worthless, and the men had no idea of practising 
self-restraint or obeying orders longer than they 
saw fit.’ When the War of 1812 began, these 
backwoods troops were pitted against British regu- 
lars who were powerfully supported by Indian allies. 
The officers of these untrained American troops 
were, like Hull, pompous, broken-down, political 
incapables; while to the men themselves may fairly 
be applied Amos Kendall’s disgusted characteriza- 
tion of a Kentucky muster: ‘‘ The soldiers are under 
no more restraint than a herd of swine. Reasoning, 
remonstrating, threatening, and ridiculing their 
officers, they show their sense of equality and their 
total want of subordination.” Not until the very 
last of the war, when under Harrison’s direction 
capable and experienced officers drilled them into 
real soldiers, did these backwoods stalwarts become 
an effective fighting force. 

t Winning of the West, vol. Iv, p. 246. 


THE WAR OF 1812 157 


There were also shortcomings of another sort. 
None was more exasperating or costly than the 
lack of means of transportation. Even in Ohio, 
the oldest and most settled portion of the North- 
west, roads _ were few and poor; elsewhere there 


sparsely populated to be able to furnish the sup- 
_ plies, even the foodstuffs, needed by the troops; 
and materials of every sort had to be transported 
from the East, by river, lake, and wilderness trail. 
Up and down the great unbroken stretches between 
the Ohio and the Lakes moved the floundering 
supply trains in the vain effort to keep up with the 
armies, or to reach camps or forts in time to avert 
starvation or disaster. Pack-horses waded knee- 
deep in mud; wagons were dragged through mire 
up to their hubs; even empty vehicles sometimes 
became so embedded that they had to be aban- 
doned, the drivers being glad to get off with their 
horses alive. Many times a quartermaster, taking 
advantage of a frost, would send off a convoy of 
provisions, only to hear of its being swamped by a 
thaw before reaching its destination. One of the 
tragedies of the war was the suffering of the troops 
while waiting for supplies of clothing, tents, medi- 


158 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


cines, and food which were stuck in swamps or 
frozen up in rivers or lakes. 

Beset with pleurisy, pneumonia, and rheumatism 
in winter, with fevers in summer, and subject to 
attack by the Indians at all times, these frontier 
soldiers led an existence of exceptional hardship. 
Only the knowledge that they were fighting for 
their freedom and their homes held them to their 
task. An interesting sidelight on the conditions 
under which their work was done is contained in 
the following extract from a letter written by a 
volunteer in 1814: 


On the second day of our march a courier arrived from 
General Harrison, ordering the artillery to advance with 
all possible speed. This was rendered totally impos- 
sible by the snow which took place, it being a complete 
swamp nearly allday. On the evening of the same day 
news arrived that General Harrison had retreated to 
Portage River, eighteen miles in the rear of the encamp- 
ment at the rapids. As many men as could be spared 
determined to proceed immediately to re-enforce him. 

At two o’clock the next morning our tents were 
struck, and in half an hour we were on the road. I will 
candidly confess that on that day I regretted being a 
soldier. On that day we marched thirty miles under 
an incessant rain; and I am afraid you will doubt my 
veracity when I tell you that in eight miles of the best 
of the road, it took us over the knees, and often to the 
middle. The Black Swamp would have been considered 


THE WAR OF 1812 159 


impassable by all but men determined to surmount 
every difficulty to accomplish the object of their march. 
In this swamp you lose sight of terra firma altogether — 
the water was about six inches deep on the ice, which 
was very rotten, often breaking through to the depth of 
four or five feet. The same night we encamped on very 
wet ground, but the driest that could be found, the rain 
still continuing. It was with difficulty we could raise 
fires; we had no tents; our clothes were wet, no axes, 
nothing to cook with, and very little to eat. A brigade 
of pack-horses being near us, we procured from them 
' some flour, killed a hog (there were plenty of them along 
the road); our bread was baked in the ashes, and our 
pork we broiled on the coals — a sweeter meal I never 
partook of. When we went to sleep it was on two logs 
laid close to each other, to keep our bodies from the 
damp ground. Good God! What a pliant being is 
man in adversity.* 


The principal theater of war was the Great 
Lakes and the lands adjacent to them. Prior to the 
campaign which culminated in Jackson’s victory 
at New Orleans after peace had been signed, the 
Mississippi Valley had been untrodden by British 
soldiery. The contest, none the less, came close 
home to the backwoods populations. Scores of 
able-bodied men from every important community 
saw months or years of toilsome service; many 
failed to return to their homes, or else returned 

* Dawson, William H. Harrison, p- 369. 


160 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


crippled, weakened, or stricken with fatal diseases; 
crops were neglected, or had only such care as could 
be given them by old men and boys; trade lan- 
guished; Indian depredations wrought further ruin 
to life and property and kept the people continually 
in alarm. Until 1814, reports of successive de- 
feats, in both the East and West, had a depress- 
ing influence and led to solemn speculation as to 
whether the back country stood in danger of fall- 
ing again under British dominion. 

It was, therefore, with a very great sense of re-_ 
lief that the West heard in 1815 that peace had 
been concluded. At a stroke both the British 
menace and the danger from the Indians were 
removed; for although the redskins were still 
numerous and discontented, their spirit of resist- 
ance was broken. Never again was there a general 
uprising against the whites; never again did the 
Northwest witness even a local Indian war of any 
degree of seriousness save Black Hawk’s Rebellion 
in 1832. Tecumseh manifestly realized before he 
made his last stand at the Thames that the cause 
of his people was forever lost. 

For several years the unsettled conditions on the 
frontiers had restrained any general migration 
thither from the seaboard States. But within a 


THE WAR OF 1812 — 161 


few months after the proclamation of peace the 
tide again set westward, and with an unprecedented 
force. Men who had suffered in their property or 
other interests from the war turned to Indiana and 
Illinois as a promising field in which to rebuild 
their fortunes. The rapid extinction of Indian 
titles opened up vast tracts of desirable land, and 
the conditions of purchase were made so easy that 
any man of ordinary industry and integrity could 
meet them. Speculators and promoters indus- 
triously advertised the advantages of localities in 
which they were interested, boomed new towns, 
and even loaned money to ambitious emigrants. 
The upshot was that the population of Indiana 
_ grew from twenty-five thousand in 1810 to seventy 
‘thousand in 1816, when the State was admitted 
| to the Union. [Illinois filled with equal rapidity, 
_and attained statehood only two years later. Then 
the tide swept irresistibly westward across the 
: Mississippi into the great regions which had been 
| aequired from France in 1803. As late as 1812 
the Territory of Missouri, comprising all of the 
Louisiana Purchase north of the present State of 
| Louisiana, had a population of only twenty-two 
thousand, including many French and Spanish 
, settlerstand traders. But in 1818 it had a popu- 


It 


162 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


lation of more than sixty thousand, and was ask- 
ing Congress for legislation under which the most 


4 


| 


; 


densely inhabited portion should be set off as the © 


State of Missouri. Thus the Old Northwest was 


not merely losing its frontier character and taking . 


its place in the nation on a footing with the sea- 


board sections; it was also serving as the open gate- 


way to a newer, vaster, and in some respects richer 
American back country. 

In the main, southern Indiana and Illinois — as 
well as the trans-Mississippi territory — drew from 
Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and the remoter 
South. North of the latitude of Indianapolis and 
St. Louis the lines of migration led chiefly from 
New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. But 
many of the settlers came, immediately or after 
only a brief interval, from Europe. The decade 
following the close of the war was a time of unprece- 
dented emigration from England, Scotland, Ire- 
land, and Germany to the United States; and while 
many of the newcomers found homes in the eastern 
States, where they in a measure offset the depopula- 
tion caused by the westward exodus, a very large 
proportion pressed on across the mountains in quest 
of the cheap lands in the undeveloped interior. 
During these years the western country ‘was re- 


THE WAR OF 1812 163 


peatedly visited by European travelers with a view 
to ascertaining its resources, markets, and other 
attractions for settlers; and emigration thither 
was powertully stimulated by the writings of these 
observers, as well as by the activities of sundry 
founders of agricultural colonies. 

“These favorable accounts,” wrote Adlard Wel- 
by, an Englishman who made a tour of inspection 
_through the West in 1819, “aided by a period of 
real privation and discontent in Europe, caused 
emigration to increase ten-fold; and though various 
reports of unfavorable nature soon circulated, and 
many who had emigrated actually returned to 
their native land in disgust, yet still the trading 
vessels were filled with passengers of all ages and 
descriptions, full of hope, looking forward to the 
West as to a land of liberty and delight — a land 
flowing with milk and honey — a second land of 
Canaan.’”* 

After the dangers from the Indians were over- 
come, , the main obstacle to western development 
was the lack of means of easy and cheap transpor- 
tation. The settler found it difficult to reach the 
region which he had selected for his home. East- 
ern supplies of salt, iron, hardware, and fabrics and 

t Thwaites, Early Western Travels, vol. xu, p. 148. 


164 _ THE OLD NORTHWEST 


foodstuffs could be obtained only at great expense. — 


The fast-increasing products of the western farms 


(nia 


— maize, wheat, meats, livestock — could be mar- — 


keted only at a cost which left a slender margin | 


of profit. The experiences of the late war had al- 
ready proved the need of highways as auxiliaries 


of national defense. It required a month to carry — 


goods from Baltimore to central Ohio. None the 
less, even before the War of 1812, hundreds of 
transportation companies were running four-horse 
freight wagons between the eastern and western 
States; and in 1820 more than three thousand 
wagons — practically all carrying western products 
— passed back and forth between Philadelphia 


and Pittsburgh, transporting merchandise valued | 


at eighteen million dollars. 
Small wonder that western producer par eastern 


dealer alike became interested_in internal improve- ~ 


ments; or that under the double stimulus of private 
and public enterprise Indian trails fast gave way 
to rough pioneer roadways, and they to carefully 
planned and durable turnpikes. Long before the 
War of 1812, Jefferson, Gallatin, Clay, and other 
statesmen had conceived of a great highway, or 
series of highways, connecting the seaboard with 
the interior as the surest and best means of pro- 


THE WAR OF 1812 eae: 


moting national unity and strength; and, in the act 
of Congress of 1802 admitting the State of Ohio, 
a promising beginning had been made by setting 
aside five per cent of the money received from ” 
the sale of public lands in the State for the build- 
ing of roads extending eastward to the navigable 
waters of Atlantic streams. In_ 1808 Secretary 
Gallatin had presented to Congress a report calling 


$$ 


for an outlay on internal improvements of two 


million dollars of federal money a year for ten 
years; and in 1811 the Government had entered 
upon the greatest undertaking of its kind in the 
history of the country. 

This enterprise was the building of the magnifi- 
cent highway known to the law as the Cumberland _ 
Road, but familiar to uncounted emigrants, travel- 
ers, and traders — and deeply embedded in the 


traditions of the Middle States and the West — ° 


as the National Road. Starting at Cumberland, 
Maryland, this great artery of commerce and 
travel was pushed slowly through the Alleghanies, 
even in the dark days of the war, and by 1818 it 
was open for traffic as far west as Wheeling. The 
method of construction was that which had lately 
been devised by John McAdam in England, and 
involved spreading crushed limestone over a care- 


166 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


fully prepared road-bed in three layers, traffic 


being permitted for a time over each layer in suc- — 


cession. This “‘macadamized” surface was curved 
to permit drainage, and extra precautions were 
taken in localities where spring freshets were likely 
to cause damage. 

Controversy raged over proposals to extend the 
road to the farthest West, to provide its upkeep by 
a system of tolls, and to build similar highways 
farther north and south. But for a time constitu- 
tional and legal difficulties were swept aside and 
construction continued. Columbus was reached in 
1833, Indianapolis about 1840; and the roadway 


was graded to Vandalia, then the capital of Illinois, — 
and marked out to Jefferson City, Missouri, al-— 


though it was never completed to the last-men- 


tioned point by federal authority. When one reads” 


that the original cost of construction mounted to” 


$10,000 a mile in central Pennsylvania, and even 
$13,000 a mile in the neighborhood of Wheeling, — 


one’s suspicion is aroused that public contracts 
were not less dubious a hundred years ago than 
they have been known to be in our own time. 
The National -Road has long since lost its im- 
portance as the great connecting link of East and 


West. But in its day, especially before 1860, it it 


THE WAR OF 1812 167 


Was a teeming thoroughfare. Its course was lined 
with hospitable farmhouses and was dotied with 
fast-growing villages and towns. Some of the latter 
which once were nationally famed were left high 
and dry by later shifts of the limes of traffic, and 
have quite disappeared from the map. Through- 
out the spring and summer months there was a 
Steady westward siream of emigranis; hardly a 
‘day failed to bring before the observer's eye the 
creaking canvas-covered wagon of the homesecker. 
Singly and in companies they went, ever toward 
the promised land. Wagon-irains of merchandise 
from the eastern markets toiled patiently along the 
way. Speculators, peddlers, and sightseers added 
to the procession, and in hundreds of farmhouses 
the women-folk and children gathered in interested 
groups by ihe evening fire io hear the chance visi- 
tor talk politics or war and retail with equal facility 
the gossip of the next township and that of Wash- 
ington or New York. Great stage-coach lines — 
the Naiional Road Stage Company, the Ohio 
National Stage Company, and others — advertised 
the advantages of their services and soughi pat- 
_Tonage with all the ingenuity of the modern rail- 
read. Taverns and roadhouses of which no trace 
remains today offered entertainment at any figure, 


168 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


and of almost any character, that the customer de- 
sired. Eastward flowed a steady stream of wagon- 
trains of flour, tobacco, and pork, with great droves 
of cattle and hogs to be fattened for the Philadel- | 
phia or Baltimore markets. 

At almost precisely the same time that the first 


eS 


_ shovelful of earth was turned for the Cumberland 
Road, people dwelling on the banks of the upper 
Ghio were startled by the spectacle of a large boat 
moving majestically down stream entirely devoid 
of sail, oar, pole, or any other visible means of — 
propulsion or control. This object of wonderment 
was the New Orleans, the first steamboat to be 
launched on western waters. : 
The conquest of the steamboat was speedy and 
complete. Already in 1819 there were sixty-three - 
such craft on the Ohio, and in 1834— when the 
total shipping tonnage of the Atlantic seaboard was 
76,064, and of the British Empire 82,696 -— the 
tonnage afloat on the Ohio and Mississippi was 
126,278. Vessels regularly ascended the navigable 
tributaries of the greater streams in quest of car- 
goes, and while craft of other sorts did not dis- 
appear, the great and growing commerce of the 
river was revolutionized. | 


THE WAR OF 1812 169 


the thriving, bustling, boastful spirit of-the-West 
found ample play. Steamboat owners vied with 
one another in adorning their vessels with bow- 
sprits, figureheads, and all manner of tinseled 
decorations, and in providing elegant accommoda- 
tions for passengers; engineers and pilots gloried 
in speed records and challenged one another to 
races which ended in some of the most shocking 
steamboat disasters known to history. The un- 
conscious bombast of an anonymous Cincinnati 
writer in Timothy Flint’s Western Monthly Review 
in 1827 gives us the real flavor of the steamboat 
business on the threshold of the Jacksonian era: 


An Atlantic cit, who talks of us under the name of back- 
woodsmen, would not believe, that such fairy structures 
of oriental gorgeousness and splendor as the Washington, 
the Florida, the Walk in the W ater, The Lady of the Lake, 
etc., etc., had ever existed in the imaginative brain of a 
romancer, much less, that they were actually im exist- 
ence, rushing down the Mississippi, as on the wings of 
the wind, or plowing up between the forests, and walk- 
ing against the mighty current “as things of life,” bear- 
ing speculators, merchants, dandies, fine ladies, every- 
thing real, and everything affected, in the form of 
humanity, with pianos, and stocks of novels, and cards, 
and dice, and flirting, and love-making, and drinking, 
and champagne, and on the deck, perhaps, three hun- 
dred fellows, who have seen alligators, and neither fear 


170 “THE OLD NORTHWEST 


whiskey, nor gun-powder. A steamboat, coming from 
New Orleans, brings to the remotest villages of our 
streams, and the very doors of the cabins, a little Paris, 
a section of Broadway, or a slice of Philadelphia, to 
ferment in the minds of our young people, the innate — 
propensity for fashions and finery. . . . Cincinnati 
will soon be the centre of the “celestial empire,” as the | 
Chinese say; and instead of encountering the storms, the | 
seasickness, and dangers of a passage from the Gulf of — 
Mexico to the Atlantic, whenever the Erie Canal shall 
be completed, the opulent southern planters will take — 
their families, their dogs and parrots, through a world — 
of forests, from New Orleans to New York, giving us a — 
call by the way. When they are more acquainted with — 
us, their voyage will often terminate here.* 
: 
} 


The new West was frankly materialistic. Yet its ” 
interests were by no means restricted to steam- — 
boats, turnpikes, crops, exports, and money-mak- 
ing. It concerned itself much with religion. One 
of the most familiar figures on trail and highway 
was the circuit-rider, with his Bible and saddle- 
bags; and no community was so remote, or so 
hardened, as not to be raised occasionally to a 
frenzy of religious zeal by the crude but terrifying 
paence of the a For education, a 


al nt ee 


the devotion of the Western rae to the twin 


tVol. 1, p. 25 (May, 1827). 


THE WAR OF 1812 171 


ideas of democracy and enlightenment find nobler 
expression than in the clause of the Indiana con- 
stitution of 1816 making it the duty of the Legisla- 
ture to provide for ““a general system of education, 
ascending im a regular gradation from township 
schools to a state university, wherein tuition shall 
be gratis, and equally open to all.” This principle 
found general application throughout the North- 
-west. By 1830 common schools existed wherever 
population was sufficient to warrant the expense; 
academies and other secondary schools were 
springing up in Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, 
and many lesser places; state universities existed 
in Ohio and Indiana; and Baptists, Methodists, 
and Presbyterians had begun to dot the country 
with small colleges. Literature developed slowly. 
But newspapers appeared almost before there 
were readers; and that the new society was by no 
means without cultural, and even esthetic, aspira- 
tion is indicated by the long-continued rivalry of 
Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky, to be known 
as “the Athens of the West.” 


CHAPTER X 
SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 


Tue War of 1812 did much in America to stimu- 
late national pride and to foster a sense of unity. 
None the less, the decade following the Peace 
of Ghent proved the beginning of a long era 
in which the point of view in politics, business, 
and social life was distinctly sectional. New Eng- 
land, the Middle States, the South, the West — — 
all were bent upon getting the utmost advantages 
from their resources; all were viewing public ques- 
tions in the light of their peculiar interests. In 
the days of Clay and Calhoun and Jackson the 
nation’s politics were essentially a struggle for 
power among the sections. . 
There was a time when the frontier folk of — 
the trans-Alleghany country from Lakes to Gulf — 
were much alike. New Englanders in the Re- 
serve, Pennsylvanians in central Ohio, Virginians 


and Carolinians in Kentucky and southern Indiana, — 
172 


_ SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 173 


ES 2 Alchemea and Mininippi, Kentocké 
ams and Tennesseeans in Illinois and Missouri — 
all were pioneer farmers and stock-raisers, ab- 
sorbed in the conquest of the wilderness and all 
thinking, working. and living m much the same 
way. But by 1820 the situation had altered. The 
West was still a “section,” whose imieresis and 
characteristics contrasted sharply with those of 
New England or the Middle States. Yet upon 
occasion it could act with very great effect, as for 
instance when it rallied to the support of Jackson 
and bore him triumphanily to the presidential 
chair. Great divergences, however, had grown up 
within this western area; differences which had 
existed from the beginning had been brought into 
sharp relief. Under play of climatic and imdus- 
trial forces, the West had itself fallen apart mito 
sections. 

Foremost was the cleavage between North and 
South, on a line marked roughly by the Ohio 
River. ‘Biver. “Climate, soil, the cotton gin, and slavery 
"combined to make of the southern West a great 
cotton-raising area, interested im the same things 
and swayed by the same impulses as the southern 
seaboard. Similarly, economic conditions com- 
bined to make of the northern Wesi a land of small 


¥ 


174 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


farmers, free labor, town-building, and diversified 
manufactures and trade. A very large chapter 
of American history hinges on this wedging apart 
of Southwest and Northwest. To this day the 


two great divisions have never wholly come to- — 


gether in their ways of thinking. 

But neither of these western segments was it- 
self entirely a unit. The Northwest, in particu- 
lar, had been settled by people drawn from every 
older portion of the country, and as the frontier 
receded and society took on a more matured aspect, 
differences of habits and ideas were accentuated 
rather than obscured. Men can get along very 
well with one another so long as they live apart 
and do not try to regulate their everyday affairs 
on common lines. 

The great human streams that poured into the 


Northwest flowed from two main sources—the | 


nearer South and New England. Ohio, Indiana, 
and Illinois were first peopled by men and women 
of Southern stock. Some migrated directly from 
Virginia, the Carolinas, and even Georgia. But 
most came from Kentucky and Tennessee and rep- 
resented the second generation of white people in 
those States, now impelled to move on to a new 
frontier by the desire for larger and cheaper farms. 


SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 175 


Included in this Southern element were many rep- 
resentatives of the well-to-do classes, who were 
drawn to the new territories by the opportunity 
for speculation in land and for political prefer- 
ment, and by the opening which the fast-growing 
communities afforded for lawyers, doctors, and 
members of other professions. The number of these 
would have been larger had there been less rigid re- 
- strictions upon slaveholding. It was rather, how- 
ever, the poorer whites— the more democratic, 
non-slaveholding Southern element — that formed 
the bulk of the earlier settlers north of the Ohio. 
There was much westward migration from New 
England before the War of 1812, but only a small 
share of it reached the Ohio country, and practi- 
cally none went beyond the Western Reserve. 
The common goal was western New York. Here 
again there was some emigration of the well-to-do 
and influential. But, as in the South, the people 
who moved were mainly those who were having 
difficulty in making ends meet and who could see 
no way of bettering their condition in their old 
homes. The back country of Maine, New Hamp- 
shire, Vermont, and western Massachusetts was 
filled with people of this sort — poor, discontented, 
restless, without political influence, and needing 


176 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


only the incentive of cheap lands in the West to 
sever the slender ties which bound them to the 


stony hillsides of New England. 

After 1815 New England emigration rose to 
astonishing proportions, and an increasing number 
of the homeseekers passed — directly or after a 
sojourn in the Lower Lake country of New York 


— into the Northwest. The opening of the Erie _ 
Canal in 1825 made the westward journey easier — 


and cheaper. The routes of travel led to Lakes On- 


tario and Erie, thence to the Reserve in northern ~ 
Ohio, thence by natural stages into other portions — 


of northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and eventu- 
ally into southern Michigan and Wisconsin. Not 
until after 1830 did the stalwart homeseekers 
penetrate north of Detroit; the great stretches of 


prairie between Lakes Erie and Michigan, and to — 


the south — left quite untouched by Southern 
pioneers — satisfied every desire of these restless 
farmers from New England. 


For a long time Southerners determined the — 


course of history in the Old Northwest. They 


occupied the field first, and they had the great 
advantage of geographical proximity to their old 
homes. Furthermore, they lived more compactly; 


the New Englanders were not only spread over — 


aa 


lL 


/ 


r 


SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 177 


the broader prairie stretches of the north, but 
scattered to some extent throughout the entire 
region between the Lakes and the Ohio.* But by 
the middle of the century not only had the score 
of northern counties been inundated by the 
“Yankees” but the waves were pushing far into 
the interior, where they met and mingled with 
the counter-current. Both Illmois and Indiana 
became, in a preéminent degree, melting-pots in 
which was fused by slow and sometimes painful 
processes an amalgam which Bryce and other keen 
observers have pronounced the most American 
thing in America. 

= In 1820 the population of Indiana was confined almost entirely to 
the southern third of the State, although the removal of the capital, im 
1825, from Corydon to Indianapolis was carried out in the confidence 
that eventually that point would become the State's populational 
@s it was its geographical center. When, in 1818, Illinois was ad- 
mitted to the Union its population was computed at 40,000. 
The figure was probably excessive; at all events, contemporaries 
testify that so eager were the people for statehood that many were 


counted twice, and even emigrants were counted as they passed 
through the Territory. But the census of 1820 showed a population 


_of 55,000, settled almost wholly in the southern third of the State, 


with narrow tongues of inhabited land stretching up the river valleys 
toward the north. Two slave States flanked the southern end of the 
commonwealth; almost half of its area lay south of a westward pro- 
longation of Mason and Dixon’s line. Save fora few Pennsylvanians, 
the people were Southern; the State was for all practical purposes a 
Southern State. As late as 1833 the Legislature numbered fifty-eight 
members from the South, nineteen from the Middle States, and only 
four from New England. ; 


178 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


Of the great national issues in the quarter-cen- 
tury following the War of 1812 there were some 
upon which people of the Northwest, in spite of 
their differing points of view, could very well agree. 
Internal improvement was one of these. Roads 
and canals were necessary outlets to southern 
and eastern markets, and any reasonable pro- 
posal on this subject could be assured of the North- 
west’s solid support. The thirty-four successive 
appropriations to 1844 for the Cumberland Road, 
Calhoun’s “Bonus Bill” of 1816, the bill of 1822 
authorizing a continuous national jurisdiction over 
the Cumberland Road, the comprehensive “‘Sur- 
vey Bill” of 1824, the Maysville Road Bill of 1830 
—all were backed by the united strength of the 
Northwestern senators and representatives. 

So with the tariff. The cry of the East for 
protection to infant industries was echoed by the 
struggling manufacturers of Cincinnati, Louisville, 
and other towns; while a protective tariff as a 
means of building up the home market for food- 
stuffs and raw materials seemed to the Westerner 
an altogether reasonable and necessary expedi- 
ent. Ohio alone in the Northwest had an op- 
portunity to vote on the protective bill of 1816, 
and gave its enthusiastic support. Ohio, Indiana, 


SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 179 


and Illinois voted unitedly for the bills of 1820, 
1824, 1828, and 1832. The principal western 
champion of the protective policy was Henry Clay, 
a Kentuckian; but the Northwest supported the 
policy more consistently than did Clay’s own State 
and section. 

On the National Bank the position of the North- 
west was no less emphatic. ~The people were lit- 
_ tle troubled by the question of constitutionality; 
but believing that the bank was an engine of tyr- 
anny in the hands of an eastern aristocracy, 
they were fully prepared to support Jackson in his 
determination to extinguish that “un-American 
monopoly.” 

There were other subjects upon which agree- 
ment was reached either with difficulty or not at 
all. One of these was the form of local govern- 
~ ment which should be adopted. Southerners and 
New Englanders brought to their new homes 
widely differing political usages. The former were 
accustomed to the county as the principal local 
unit of administration. It was a relatively large 
division, whose affairs were managed by elective 
officers, mainly a board of commissioners. The 
New Englanders, on the other hand, had grown 
up under the town-meeting system and clung to 


180 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


the notion that an indispensable feature of demo- 
cratic local government is the periodic assembling 
of the citizens of a community for legislative, 
fiscal, and electoral purposes. The Illinois con- 
stitution of 1818 was made by Southerners, and 
naturally it provided for the county system. But 
protest from the “Yankee” elements became so 
strong that in the new constitution of 1848 provi- 
sion was made for township organization wherever 
the people of a county wanted it; and this form of 
government, at first prevalent only in the northern 
counties, is now found in most of the central and 
southern counties as well. 

The most deeply and continuously dividing 


issue in the Northwest, as in the nation at large, A 


was negro slavery. Although written by Southern 
men, the Ordinance of 1787 stipulated that’ there 
should be “neither slavery nor involuntary servi- 
tude in the said territory, otherwise than in the 
punishment of crimes whereof the party shall 
have been duly convicted.” If the government 
of the Northwest had been one of laws, and not 
of men, this specific provision would have made 
the territory free soil and would have relieved 
the inhabitants from all interest in the “peculiar 
institution.” But the laws never execute them- 


SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 181 


selves — least of all in frontier communities. In 
point of fact, considerable numbers of slaves were 
held in the territory until the nineteenth century 
was far advanced. As late as 1830 thirty-two 
negroes were held in servitude in the single town 
of Vincennes. Slavery could and did prevail to a 
limited extent because existing property rights 
were guaranteed in the Ordinance itself, in the 

deed of cession by Virginia, in the Jay Treaty of 
1794, and in other fundamental acts. The courts 
of the Northwest held that slave-owners whose 
property could be brought under any of these 
guarantees might retain that property; and al- 
though no court countenanced further importation, 
itinerant Southerners — “‘rich planters traveling 
in their family carriages, with servants, packs of 
hunting-dogs, and trains of slaves, their nightly 
camp-fires lighting up the wilderness where so 
recently the Indian hunter had held possession” 
— occasionally settled in southern Indiana or 
Tllinois and with the connivance of the authorities 
kept some of their dependents in slavery, or quasi- 
slavery, for decades. 

Of actual slaveholders there were not enough to 
influence public sentiment greatly. But the people 
of Southern extraction, although neither slave- 


182 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


holders nor desiring to become such, had no strong 
moral convictions on the subject. Indeed, they 
were likely to feel that the anti-slavery restriction 
imposed an unfortunate impediment in the way 
of immigration from the South. Hence the per- 
sistent demand of citizens of Indiana and Illinois 
for a relaxation of the drastic prohibition of slavery 
in the Ordinance of 1787. In 1796 Congress was 
petitioned from Kaskaskia to extend relief; in 1799 
the territorial Legislature was urged to bring about 
a repeal; in 1802 an Indiana territorial convention 
at Vincennes memorialized Congress in behalf of a 
suspension of the proviso for a period of ten years. 
Not only were violations of the law winked at, 
but both Indiana and Illinois deliberately built up 
a system of indenture which partook strongly of 
the characteristics of slavery. After much con- 
troversy, Indiana, in 1816, framed a state con- 
stitution which reiterated the language of the 
Northwest Ordinance, but without invalidating 
titles to existing slave property; while Illinois 
was admitted to the Union in 1818 with seven or 
eight hundred slaves upon her soil, and with a 
constitution which continued the old system of 
indenture with slight modification. 


; 


In a heated contest in Illinois in 1824 over the 


SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 183 


question of calling a state convention to draft a 
constitution legalizing slavery the people of North- 
ern antecedents made their votes tell and defeated 
the project. But, like other parts of the North- 
west, this State never became a unit on the slay- 
ery issue. Certainly it never became abolitionist. 
By an almost unanimous vote the Legislature, in 
1837, adopted joint resolutions which condemned 


‘ abolitionism as “‘more productive of evil than 


of moral and political good”; and in Congress in 
the preceding year the delegation of the State 
had given solid support to the “‘gag resolutions,” 
which were intended to deny a hearing to all 
petitions on the slavery question. 

Throughout the great era of slavery controversy 
the Northwest was prolific of schemes of compro- 
mise, for the constant clash of Northern and 
Southern elements developed an aptitude for 
settlement by agreement on moderate lines. The 
people of the section as a whole long clung to 
popular, or “‘squatter,” sovereignty as the su- 
premely desirable solution of the slavery question 
—a device formulated and defended by two of the 
Northwest’s own statesmen, Cass and Douglas, 
and relinquished only slowly and reluctantly under 
the leadership, not of a New England abolitionist, 


184 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


but of a statesman of Southern birth who had 
come to the conclusion that the nation could not 
permanently exist half slave and half free. 

Cass, Douglas, Lincoln — all were adopted sons / 
of the Northwest, and the career of every one 
illustrates not only the prodigality with which 
the back country showered its opportunities upon 
men of industry and talent, but the play and 
interplay of sectional and social forces in the build- _ 
ing of the newer nation. Cass and Douglas were 
New Englanders. One was born at Exeter, New 
Hampshire, in 1782; the other at Brandon, Ver- — 
mont, in 1813. Lincoln sprang from Virginian and 
Kentuckian stocks. His father’s family moved 
from Virginia to Kentucky at the close of the Re- 
volution; in 1784 his grandfather was killed by 
lurking Indians, and his father, then a boy of six, 
was saved from captivity only by a lucky shot of 
an older brother. Lincoln himself was born in 
1809. Curiously enough, Cass and Douglas, the 
New Englanders, played their réles on the national 
stage as Jackson Democrats, while Lincoln, the 
Kentuckian of Virginian ancestry, became a Whig 
and later a Republican. 

Cass and Douglas were well fren Cass’s father 
was a thrifty soldier-farmer who made for his 


—o 


SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 185 


family a comfortable home at Zanesville, Ohio; 
Douglas’s father was a successful physician. Lin- 
coln was born in obscurity and wretchedness. 
His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a ne’er-do-well 
Kentucky carpenter, grossly illiterate, unable or 
unwilling to rise above the lowest level of existence 
in the pioneer settlements. His mother, Nancy 
Hanks, whatever her antecedents may have been, 
was a woman of character, and apparently of 
some education. But she died when her son was 
only nine years of age. 

Cass and Douglas had educational opportunities 
which in their day were exceptional. Both attended 
famous academies and received instruction in the 
classics, mathematics, and philosophy. Both grew 
up in an environment of enlightenment and in- 
tegrity. Lincoln, on the other hand, got a few 
weeks of instruction under two amateur teachers in 
Kentucky and a few months more in Indiana — 
in all, hardly as much as one year; and as a boy 
he knew only rough, coarse surroundings. When, 
in 1816, the restless head of the family moved from 
Kentucky to southern Indiana, his worldly be- 
longings consisted of a parcel of carpenters’ tools 
and cooking utensils, a little bedding, and about 
four hundred gallons of whiskey. No one who has 


186 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


not seen the sordidness, misery, and apparent hope- 
lessness of the life of the “‘poor whites’”’ even to- 
day, in the Kentucky and southern Indiana hills, 
can fully comprehend the chasm which separated 
the boy Lincoln from every sort of progress and 
distinction. 

All three men prepared for public life by em- 
bracing the profession that has always, in this 
country, proved the surest avenue to preferment 
—thelaw. But, whereas Cass arrived at matur- 
ity just in time to have an active part in the War of 
1812, and in this way to make himself the most 
logical selection for the governorship of the newly 
organized Michigan Territory, Douglas saw no 
military service, and Lincoln only a few weeks of 
service during the Black Hawk War, and both 
were obliged to seek fame and fortune along the 
thorny road of politics. Following admission to 
the bar at Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1834, Douglas 
was elected public prosecutor of the first judicial 
circuit in 1835; elected to the state Legislature in 
1836; appointed by President Van Buren registrar 
of the land office at Springfield in 1837; made a 
judge of the supreme court of the State in 1841; 
and elected to the national House of Representa- 
tives in 1843. Resourceful, skilled in debate, 


SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS 187 


intensely patriotic, and favored with many win- 
ning personal qualities, he drew to himself men of 
both Northern and Southern proclivities and be- 
came an influential exponent of broad and endur- 
ing nationalism. 

Meanwhile, after a first defeat, Lincoln was 
elected to the Illinois Legislature in 1834, and again 
in 1836. When he gathered all of his worldly be- 
longings in a pair of saddle-bags and fared forth to 
the new capital, Springfield, to settle himself to the 
practice of law, he had more than a local reputa- 
tion for oratorical power; and events were to prove 
that he had not only facility in debate and famil- 
iarity with public questions, but incomparable 
devotion to lofty principles. In the subsequent 
unfolding of the careers of Lincoln and Douglas — 
especially in the turn of events that brought to 
each a nomination for the presidency by a great 
party in 1860 — there was no small amount of 
good luck and sheer accident. But it is equally 
true that by prodigious effort Kentuckian and 
Vermonter alike hewed out their own ways to 
greatness. 

It was the glory of the Northwest to offer a 
competence to the needy, the baffled, the dis- 
couraged; the tormented of the eastern States and 


188 THE OLD NORTHWEST 7 


of Europe. The bulk of its fast-growing popula- 
tion consisted, it is true, of ordinary folk who 
could have lived on in fair comfort in the older 
sections, yet who were ambitious to own more 
land, to make more money, and to secure larger 
advantages for their children. But nowhere else 
was the road for talent so wide open, entirely ir- 
respective of inheritance, possessions, education, 
environment. Nowhere outside of the trans- _ 
Alleghany country would the rise of a Lincoln 
have been possible. 


CHAPTER XI 
THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 


» WuitE the Ohio country —the lower half of 
the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois — was 
throwing off its frontier character, the remoter 
Northwest was still a wilderness frequented only 
by fur-traders and daring explorers. And that 
far Northwest by the sources of the Mississippi 
had been penetrated by few white men since the 
seventeenth century. The earliest white visitors 
to the upper Mississippi are not clearly known. 
They may have been Pierre Radisson and his 
brother-in-law, Ménard des Grosseilliers, who are 
alleged to have covered the long portage from 
Lake Superior to the Mississippi in or about 1665; 
but the matter rests entirely on how one interprets 
Radisson’s vague account of their western peram- 
bulations. At all events, in 1680 — seven years 
after the descent of the river from the Wiscon- 


sin to the Arkansas by Marquette and Joliet — 
189 


190 THE OLD NORTHWEST 7 
Louis Hennepin, under instructions from La Salle, 
explored the stream from the mouth of the IIli- 
nois to the Falls of St. Anthony, where the city of 
Minneapolis now stands, five hundred miles from 
the true source. 

There the matter of exploration rested until 
the days of Thomas Jefferson, when the purchase 
of Louisiana lent fresh interest to northwestern 
geography. In 1805 General James Wilkinson, in 
military command in the West, dispatched Lieu- 
tenant Zebulon M. Pike with a party of twenty 
men from St. Louis to explore the headwaters of 
the great river, make peace with the Indians, and 
select sites for fortified posts. From his winter 
quarters near the Falls, Pike pushed northward over 
the snow and ice until, early in 1806, he reached 
Leech Lake, in Cass County, Minnesota, which he 
wrongly took to be the source of the Father of 
Waters. It is little wonder that, at a time when 
the river and lake surfaces were frozen over and 
the whole country heavily blanketed with snow, 
he should haye found it difficult to disentangle 
the maze of streams and lakes which fill the low- 
lying region around the headwaters of the Missis- 
sippi, the Red River, and the Lake of the Woods. 
In 1820 General Cass, Governor of Michigan, 


THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 191 


which then’ had the Mississippi for its western 
boundary, led an expedition into the same region as 
far as Cass Lake, where the Indians told him that 
the true source lay some fifty miles to the north- 
west. It remained for the traveler and ethnologist 
Henry Schoolcraft, twelve years later, to discover 
Lake Itasca, in modern Clearwater County, which 
occupies a depression near the center of the rock- 
-rimmed basin in which the river takes its rise. 

It was not these infrequent explorers, however, 
who opened paths for pioneers into the remote 
Northwest, but traders in search of furs and pelts 
— those commercial pathfinders of western civil- 
ization. There is scarcely a town or city in the 
State of Wisconsin that does not owe its origin, 
directly or indirectly, to these men. Cheap and 
tawdry enough were the commodities bartered for 
these wonderful beaver and otter pelts — ribbons 
and gewgaws, looking-glasses and combs, blankets 
and shawls of gaudy color. But scissors and 
knives, gunpowder and shot, tobacco and whiskey, 
went also in the traders’ packs, though traffic 
in fire-water was forbidden. These goods, upon 
arrival at Mackinac, were sent out by canoes 
and bateaux to the different posts, where they 
were dealt out to the savages directly or were dis- 


192 THE OLD NORTHWEST 4 


patched to the winter camps along the far-reach- _ 
ing waterways. ‘Returning home in the spring, 
the bucks would set their squaws and children 
at making maple-sugar or planting corn, water- 
melons, potatoes, and squash, while they them- 
selves either dawdled their time away or hunted 
for summer furs. In the autumn, the wild rice was 
garnered along the sloughs and the river mouths, 
and the straggling field crops were gathered in 
—some of the product being hidden in skillfully 
covered pits, as a reserve, and some dried for 
transportation in the winter’s campaign. The vil- 
lagers were now ready to depart for their hunt- 
ing-grounds, often hundreds of milesaway. It was 
then that the trader came and credits were wrangled 
over and extended, each side endeavoring to get the 
better of the other.”’* 

This traffic was largely managed by the British 
in Canada until 1816, when an act of Congress 
forbade foreign traders to operate on United States 
soil. But a heavier blow was inflicted in the es- 
tablishment of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur 
Company, which was given a substantial monopoly 
of Indian commerce. From its headquarters on 
Mackinac Island this great corporation rapidly 


t Thwaites, Story of Wisconsin, p. 156. 


THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 193 


squeezed the clandestine British agents out of the 
American trade, introduced improved methods, 
and built up a system which covered the entire 
fur-bearing Northwest. 

Of this remoter Northwest, the region between 
Lakes Erie and Michigan was the most accessible 
from the East; yet it was avoided by the first pio- 
neers, who labored under a strange misapprehen- 

- sion about its climate and resources. In spite of 
the fact that it abounded in rich bottom-lands 
and fertile prairies and was destined to become 
one of the most bountiful orchards of the world, 
it was reported by early prospectors to be swampy 
and unfit for cultivation. Though Governor Cass 
did his best to overcome this prejudice, for years 
settlers preferred to gather mainly about Detroit, 
leaving the rich interior to fur-traders. When en- 
lightenment eventually came, population poured 
in with arush. Detroit — which was a village in 
1820 — became ten years later a thriving city of 
thirty thousand and the western terminus of a 
steamboat line from Buffalo, which year after year 
multiplied its traffic. By the year 1837 the great 
territory lying east of Lake Michigan was ready 
for statehood. 

Almost simultaneously the region to the west 


13 


194 THE OLD NORTHWEST 
of Lake Michigan began to emerge from the fur- 


trading stage. The place of the picturesque trader, 7 


however, was not taken at once by the prosaic 
farmer. The next figure in the pageant was the 
miner. The presence of lead in the stretch of 
country between the Wisconsin and Illinois rivers 
was known to the Indians before the coming of the 
white man, but they began to appreciate its value 
only after the introduction of firearms by the 
French. The ore lay at no great depth in the 


Galena limestone, and the aborigines collected 4 


it either by stripping it from the surface or by 
sinking shallow shafts from which it was hoisted 
in deerskin bags. Shortly after the War of 1812 
American prospectors pushed into the region, and 
the Government began granting leases on easy 
terms to operators. In 1823 one of these men 
arrived with soldiers, supplies, skilled miners, 
and one hundred and fifty slaves; and thereafter 
the “‘diggings”’ fast became a mecca for miners, 
smelters, speculators, merchants, gamblers, and 
get-rich-quick folk of every sort, who swarmed 
thither by thousands from every part of the 
United States, especially the South, and even from 
Europe. ‘Mushroom towns sprang up all over 
the district; deep-worn native paths became ore 


THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 195 


roads between the burrows and the river-land- 
ings; sink-holes abandoned by the Sauk and Foxes, 
when no longer to be operated with their crude 
tools, were reopened and found to be exception- 
ally rich, while new diggings and smelting-fur- 
naces, fitted out with modern appliances, fairly 
dotted the map of the country.”’? 

Galena was the entrepét of the region. A trail 
cut thither from Peoria soon became a well-worn 
coach road; roads were early opened to Chicago 
and Milwaukee. In 1822 Galena was visited by a 
Mississippi River steamboat, and a few years later 
regular steamboat traffic was established. And 
it was by these roadways and waterways that 
homeseekers soon began to arrive. 


The invasion of the white man, accompanied 
though it was by treaties, was bitterly resented 
by the Indian tribes who occupied the Northwest 
above the Illinois River. These Sioux, Sauk and 
Foxes, and Winnebagoes, with remnants of other 
tribes, carried on an intermittent warfare for years, 
despite the efforts of the Federal Government to 
define tribal boundaries; and between red men and 
white men coveting the same lands causes of irrita- 


« Thwaites, Story of Wisconsin, p. 168. 


196 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


tion were never wanting. In 1827 trouble which 
had been steadily brewing came to the boiling- 
point. Predatory expeditions in the north were — 
reported; the Winnebagoes were excited by rumors 
that another war between the United States and 
Great Britain was imminent; an incident or even 


_— 


an accident was certain to provoke hostilities. 
The incident occurred. When Red Bird, a petty 
Winnebago chieftain dwelling in a “town” on the 
Black River, was incorrectly informed that two 
Winnebago braves who -had been imprisoned at 
Prairie du Chien had been executed, he promptly “ 
instituted vengeance. A farmer’s family in the 
neighborhood of Prairie du Chien was massacred, 
and two keel-boats returning down stream from 
Fort Snelling were attacked, with some loss of 
life. The settlers hastily repaired the old fort and 
also dispatched messengers to give the alarm. 
Galena sent a hundred militiamen; a battalion 
came down from Fort Snelling; Governor Cass 
arrived on the spot by way of Green Bay; Gen- 
eral Atkinson brought up a full regiment from 
Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis; and finally 
Major Whistler proceeded up the Fox with a 
portion of the troops stationed at Fort Howard, 
on Green Bay. 


—.° 7. 


THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 197 


When all was in readiness, the Winnebagoes were 
notified that, unless Red Bird and his primeipal 
accomplice, Wekau, were promptly surrendered, 
the tribe would be extermimated. The threat had 
its imtended effect, amd the two culprits duly 
presented themselves at Whistler’s camp on the 
Fox—Wisconsin portage, in full savage regalia, and 
singing their war dirges. Red Bird, who was am 
Indian of magnificent physique and lofty bearmg, 
had but one request to make — that he be not 
committed to irons — and this request was granted. 
At Prairie du Chien, whither the two were sent for 
trial, he had opportunities to escape, but he re- 
fused to violate his word by taking advantage of 
them. Following their trial, the redskms were 
condemned to be hanged. Unused to captivity, 
however, Red Bird languished and soon died, 
while his accomplice was pardoned by President 
Adams. In 1828 Fort Winnebago was erected 
on the site of Red Bird’s surrender. 

The Winnebagoes now agreed to renounce for- 
ever their claims to the lead mimes. Furthermore, 
im the same year, the site of the primcipal Sauk 
village and burying-ground, on Rock River, three 
miles south of the present city of Rock Island, was _ 
sold by the Government, and the Sauk and Foxes ‘ 


198 THE OLD NORTHWEST 4 


resident in the vicinity were given notice to leave. 
Under the Sauk chieftain Keokuk most of the dis- 
possessed warriors withdrew peacefully beyond 
the Mississippi, and two years later the tribal 
representatives formally yielded all claims to lands 
east of that stream. Some members of the tribe, 
however, established themselves on the high bluff 
which has since been known as Black Hawk’s 
Watch Tower and defied the Government to 
remove them. 

The leading spirit in this protest was Black A 
Hawk, who though neither born a chief nor elected 
to that dignity, had long been influential in the 
village and among his people at large. During the 
War of 1812 he became an implacable enemy of 
the Americans, and, after fighting with the British 
at the battles of Frenchtown and the Thames, he 
returned to Illinois and carried on a border war- 
fare which ended only with the signing of a special 
treaty of peace in 1816. For years thereafter 
he was accustomed to lead his “British band” 
periodically across northern Illinois and southern 
Michigan to the British Indian agency to receive 
presents of arms, ammunition, provisions, and 
trinkets; and he was a principal intermediary in 
the British intrigues which gave Cass, as superin- 


THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 199 


tendent of Indian affairs in the Northwest, many 
uneasy days. He was ever a restless spirit and a 
promoter of trouble, although one must admit 
that he had some justice on his side and that he 
was probably honest and sincere. ‘Tall, spare, 
with pinched features, exceptionally high cheek- 
bones, and a prominent Roman nose, he was a 
figure to command attention — the more so by 
_ reason of the fact that he had practically no eye- ' 
brows and no hair except a scalp-lock, in which on 
state occasions he fastened a flaming bunch of dyed 
eagle feathers. 

Returning from their hunt in the spring of 1830, 
Black Hawk and his warriors found the site of their 
town preémpted by white settlers and their an- 
cestral burying-ground ploughed over. In deep 
rage, they set off for Malden, where they were 
liberally entertained and encouraged to rebel. 
Coming again to the site of their village a year 
later, they were peremptorily ordered away. This 
time they resolved to stand their ground, and 
Black Hawk ordered the squatters themselves to 
withdraw and gave them until the middle of the 
next day to do so. Black Hawk subsequently 
maintained that he did not mean to threaten 
bloodshed. But the settlers so construed his com- 


200 THE OLD NORTHWEST ~ 


mand and deluged Governor Reynolds with peti- 
tions for help. With all possible speed, sixteen 
hundred volunteers and ten companies of United 
States regulars were dispatched to the scene, and 
on the 25th of June, they made an impressive dem- 
onstration within view of the village. In the face 
of such odds discretion seemed the better part 
of valor, and during the succeeding night Black 
Hawk and his followers quietly paddled across 
the Mississippi. Four days later they signed an 
agreement never to return to the eastern banks 
without express permission from the United States 
Government. 

On the Indian side this compact was not meant 
to be kept. Against the urgent advice of Keokuk 
and other leaders, Black Hawk immediately began 
preparations for a campaign of vengeance. Brit- 
ish intrigue lent stimulus, and a crafty “prophet,” 
who was chief of a village some thirty-five miles 
up the Rock, made it appear that aid would 
be given by the Potawatomi, Winnebagoes, and 
perhaps other powerful peoples. In the first week 
of April, 1832, the disgruntled leader and about 
five hundred braves, with their wives and children, 
crossed the Mississippi at Yellow Banks and as- 
cended the Rock River to the prophet’s town, with 


THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 201 


a view to raising a crop of corn during the summer 
and taking the war-path in the fall. 

The invasion created much alarm throughout 
the frontier country. The settlers drew together 
about the larger villages, which were put as 
rapidly as possible in a state of defense. Again 
the Governor called for volunteers, and again the 
response more than met the expectation. Four 
regiments were organized, and to them were joined 
four hundred regulars. One of the first persons 
to come forward with an offer of his services 
was a tall, ungainly, but powerful young man 
from Sangamon County, who had but two years 
before settled in the State, and who was at once 
honored with the captaincy of hiscompany. This _ 
man was Abraham Lincoln. Other men whose 
names loom large in American history were with 
the little army also. The commander of the io 
regulars was Colonel Zachary Taylor. Among his 
lieutenants were Jefferson Davis and Albert Sid- > 
ney Johnston, and Robert Anderson, the defender ( 
of Fort Sumter in 1860, was a colonel of Illinois | 
volunteers. It is said that the oath of allegiance 
was administered to young Lincoln by Lieutenant 
Jefferson Davis! 


Over marshy trails and across streams swollen 


202 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


by the spring thaws the army advanced to Dixon’s 
Ferry, ninety miles up the Rock, whence a de- 
tachment of three hundred men was sent out, 
under Major Stillman, to reconnoitre. Unluckily, 
this force seized three messengers of peace dis- 
patched by Black Hawk and, in the clash which 
followed, was cut to pieces and-driven into head- 
long flight by a mere handful of red warriors. 
The effect of this unexpected affray was both to 
stiffen the Indians to further resistance aad to 
precipitate a fresh panic throughout the frontier. 
All sorts of atrocities ensued, and Black Hawk’s 
name became a household bugaboo the country 
over. 

Finally a new levy was made ready and sent 
north. Pushing across the overflowed wilderness 
stretches, past the sites of modern Beloit and 
Madison, this army, four thousand strong, came 
upon the fleeing enemy on the banks of the Wis- 
consin River, and at Wisconsin Heights, near the 
present town of Prairie du Sac, it inflicted a severe 
defeat upon the Indians. Again Black Hawk de- 
sired to make peace, but again he was frustrated, 
this time by the lack of an interpreter. The red- 
skins’ flight was continued in the direction of the 
Mississippi, which they reached in midsummer. 


THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 203 


They were prevented from crossing by lack of 
canoes, and finally the half-starved band found 
itself caught between the fire of a force of regulars 
on the land side and a government supply steamer, 
the Warrior, on the water side, and between these 
two the Indian band was practically annihilated. 

Thus ended the war — a contest originating in 
no general uprising or far-reaching plan, such as 
marked the rebellions instigated by Pontiac and 
Tecumseh, but which none the less taxed the 
strength of the border populations and opened a 
new chapter in the history of the remoter north- 
western territories. Black Hawk himself took re- 
fuge with the Winnebagoes in the Dells of the Wis- 
consin, only to be treacherously delivered over to 
General Street at Prairie du Chien. Under the 
terms of a treaty of peace signed at Fort Armstrong 
(Rock Island) in September, the fallen leader and 
some of his accomplices were held as hostages, 
and during the ensuing winter they were kept at 
Jefferson Barracks (St. Louis) under the surveil- 
lance of Jefferson Davis. In the spring of 1833 
they were taken to Washington, where they had 
an interview with President Jackson. “‘We did 
not expect to conquer the whites,” Black Hawk 
told the President; ‘“‘they had too many houses, 


204 THE OLD NORTHWEST 


too many men. I took up the hatchet, for my 
part, to revenge injuries which my people could 
no longer endure. Had I borne them longer with- 
out striking, my people would have said, ‘Black 
Hawk is a woman — he is too old to be a chief — 
he is no Sauk.’” After a brief imprisonment at 


Fortress Monroe, where Jefferson Davis was him- _ 
self confined at the close of the Civil War, the 
captives were set free, and were taken to Phila- 
delphia, New York, up the Hudson, and finally 
back to the Rock River country. 
For some years Black Hawk lived quietly ona 
small reservation near Des Moines. In 1837 the 
peace-loving Keokuk took him with a party of 
Sauk and Fox chiefs again to Washington, and on 
this trip he made a visit to Boston. The officials 
of the city received the august warrior and his 
companions in Faneuil Hall, and the Governor of 
the commonwealth paid them similar honor at the — 
State House. Some war-dances were performed 
on the Common for the amusement of the popu- 
lace, and afterwards the party was taken to see a 
performance by Edwin Forrest at the Tremont 
Theatre. Here all went well, except that at an 
exciting point in the play where one of the char- 
acters fell dying the Indians burst out into a war- 


‘A few months after returning to his Iowa home, 
Black Hawk, now seventy-one years of age, was | 
gathered to his fathers. He was buried about 
half a mile from his cabin, im a sitting posture, his 
left hand graspimg a cane presented to him by 
Henry Clay, and at his side a supply of food amd 
tobacco sufficient to last him to the spit land, 
supposed to be three days’ travel. “Rock River,” 
he said im a speech at a Fourth of July celebra- 
tiom shortly before his death, “was a beautiful 
country. I liked my town, my cornfields, and the 
home of my people. I fought forit. Tk = now 
yours. Keep it, as we did. [i will produce you 
good crops.” 


The Black Hawk War opened 2 new chapter im 
the history of the Northwest. The soldiers carried — 
to their homes remarkable stories of the richmess 
and attractiveness of the northerm country, and 
the eastern newspapers printed not only detailed 
accounts of the several expeditions but highly 
colored descriptions of the charms of the regiom. 
Books and pamphlets by the score helped to at- 
tract the attention of the country. The result 


‘ ‘ * . 
206 THE OLD NORTHWEST ie 


was a heavy influx of settlers, many of them ciel 
ing all the way from New England and New York, 4 
others from Pennsylvania and Ohio. Lands were 
rapidly surveyed and placed on sale, and surviving 
Indian hunting-grounds were purchased. North- 
ern Ilnois filled rapidly with a thrifty farming 
population, and the town of Chicago became an 
entrep6t. Further north, Wisconsin had been or- 
ganized, in 1836, as a Territory, including not 
only the present State of that name but Iowa, 
.Minnesota, and most of North and South Dakota. 
As yet the Iowa country, however, had been visited 
by few white people; and such as came were only 
hunters and trappers, agents of the American 
Fur and other trading companies, or independent 
traders. Two of the most active of these free- 
lances of early days — the French Canadian Du- 
buque and the Englishman Davenport — have left 
their names to flourishing cities. 

To recount the successive purchases by which 
the Government freed Iowa soil from Indian domi- “ 
nation would be wearisome. The Treaty of 1842 
with the Sauks and Foxes is typical. After a so- 
journ of hardly more than a decade in the Iowa 
country, these luckless folk were now persuaded to 
yield all their lands to the United States and re- 


THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 207 


tire to a reservation in Kansas. The negotiations 
were carried out with all due regard for Indian - 
susceptibilities. Governor Chambers, resplendent 
in the uniform of a brigadier-general of the United 
States army, repaired with his aides to the ap- 
pointed rendezvous, and there the chiefs presented 
themselves, arrayed in new blankets and white 
deerskin leggings, with full paraphernalia of paint, 
feathers, beads, and elaborately decorated war 
clubs. Oratory ran freely, although through the 
enforced medium of an interpreter. The chiefs 
harangued for hours not only upon the beautiful 
meadows, the running streams, the stately trees, 
and the other beloved objects which they were 
called upon to surrender to the white man, but 
upon the moon and stars and rain and hail and 
wind, all of which were alleged to be more attractive 
and beneficent in Iowa than anywhere else. The 
Governor, in turn, gave the Indians some good 
advice, urging them to live peaceably in their new 
homes, to be industrious and self-supporting, to 
leave liquor alone, and, in general, to “be a credit 
to the country.”’ When every one had talked as 
much as he liked, the treaty was sclemnly signed. 
The ‘‘New Purchase”’ was thrown open to set- 
tlers in the following spring; and the opening 


208 THE OLD NORTHWES 


brought scenes of a kind destined to be reénacted 
scores of times in the great West during succeeding 
decades — the borders of the new district lined, 
on the eve of the opening, with encamped settlers 
and their families ready to race for the best claims; 
horses saddled and runners picked for the rush; a 
midnight signal from the soldiery, releasing a flood 
of eager land-hunters armed with torches, axes, 
stakes, and every sort of implement for the laying 
out of claims with all possible speed; by daybreak, 
many scores of families “squatting” on the best 
pieces of ground which they had been able to 
reach; innumerable disputes, with a general read- 
justment following the intervention of the govern- 
ment surveyors. 

The marvelous progress of the upper Mississippi 
Valley is briefly told by a succession of dates. In 
_ 1838 Iowa was organized as a Territory; in 1846 it 
was admitted as a State; in 1848 Wisconsin was 
granted statehood; and in 1849 Minnesota was 
given territorial organization with boundaries ex- 
tending westward to the Missouri. 


Thus the Old Northwest had arrived at the goal 
set for it by the large-visioned men who framed 
the Ordinance of 1787; every foot of its soil was in- 


THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY ae 


cluded in some one of the five thriving, co 
commonwealths that had taken their places in the 
Union on a common basis with the older States of 
the East and the South. Furthermore, the Missis- 
sippi had ceased to be a boundary. A magnificent 
vista reaching off to the remoter West and North- 
west had been opened up; the frontier had been 
pushed far out upon the plains of Minnesota and 
Iowa. Decade after decade the powerful epic of 
westward expansion, shot through with countless 
tales of heroism and sacrifice, had steadily un- 
folded before the gaze of an astonished world; and 


the end was not yet in sight. 
14 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 


THERE is no general history of the Northwest covering 
the whole of the period dealt with in this book except 
Burke A. Hinsdale, The Old Northwest (1888). This is 
_ a volume of substantial scholarship, though it reflects 
but faintly the life and spirit of the people. The 
nearest approach to a moving narrative is James K. 
Hosmer, Short History of the Mississippi Valley (1901), 
which tells the story of the Middle West from the 
earliest explorations to the close of the nineteenth 
century, within a brief space, yet in a manner to arouse 
the reader’s interest and sympathy. A fuller and very 
readable narrative to 1796 will be found in Charles 
Moore, The Northwest under Three Flags (1900). Still 
more detailed, and enlivened by many contemporary 
maps and plans, is Justin Winsor, The Westward Move- 
ment (1899), covering the period from the pacification of 
1763 to the close of the eighteenth century. Frederick 
J. Turner, Rise of the New West (1906) contains several 
interesting and authoritative chapters on western de- 
velopment after the War of 1812; and John B. Mc- 
Master, History of the People of the United States (8 
vols., 1883-1913), gives in the fourth and fifth volumes 
a very good account of westward migration. 

An excellent detailed account of the settlement and 


development of a single section of the Northwest is 
211 


212 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 


G. N. Fuller, Economic and Social Beginnings of Micht- — 


gan, Michigan Historical Publications, Univ. Series, 
No. 1 (1916). A very readable book is R. G. Thwaites, 
The Story of Wisconsin (rev. ed., 1899), containing a 
full account of the early relations of white men and 
red men, and of the Black Hawk War. Mention may 
be made, too, of H. E. Legler, Leading Events of Wiscon- 
sin History (1898). 


Among the volumes dealing with the diplomatic his- — 


tory of the Northwest, mention should be made of two 
recent studies: C. W. Alvord, The Mississippi Valley 
in British Politics (2 vols., 1917), and E. S. Corwin, 
French Policy and the American Alliance (1916). 

Aside from Lincoln, few men of the earlier North- 
west have been made the subjects of well-written bio- 
graphies. Curiously, there are no modern biographies, 
good or bad, of George Rogers Clark, General St. Clair, 
or William Henry Harrison. John R. Spears, Anthony 
Wayne (1903) is an interesting book; and Andrew C. 
McLaughlin, Lewis Cass (1891), and Allen Johnson, 
Stephen A. Douglas (1908) are excellent. Lives of 
Lincoln that have importance for their portrayal of 
western society include: John T. Morse, Jr., Abraham 
Lincoln (2 vols., 1893); John G. Nicolay and John Hay, 
Abraham Lincoln, a History (10 vols., 1890); and Ida 
M. Tarbell, Life of Abraham Lincoln (new ed., 2 vols., 
1917). 

The reader will do well, however, to turn early to 
some of the works within the field which, by reason of 
their literary quality as well as their scholarly worth, 
have attained the dignity of classics. Foremost are 
the writings of Francis Parkman. Most of these, it is 
true, deal with the history of the American interior 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 213 


prior to 1763. But Frontenac and New France under 
Louis XIV (Frontenac edition, 1915), and A Half- 
Century of Conflict (2 vols., same ed.) furnish the neces- 
sary background; and The Conspiracy of Pontiac (2 
vols., same ed.) is indispensable. Parkman’s work 
closes with the Indian war following the Treaty of 1763. 
Theodore Roosevelt’s Winning of the West (4 vols., 
1889-96) takes up the story at that point and carries 
it to the collapse of the Burr intrigues during the second 
administration of Thomas Jefferson. _This work was a 
_ pioneer in the field. In the light of recent scholarship 
it is subject to criticism at some points; but it is based 
on careful study of the sources, and for vividness and 
interest it has perhaps not been surpassed in American 
historical writing. A third extensive work is Archer B. 
Hulbert, Historic Highways of America (16 vols., 1902- 
05). In writing the history of the great land and 
water routes of trade and travel between East and 
West the author found occasion to describe, in interest- 
ing fashion, most phases of western life. The volumes 
most closely related to the subject matter of the present 
book are: Military Roads of the Mississippi Valley 
(VIII); Waterways of Western Expansion (IX); The 
Cumberland Road (X); and Pioneer Roads and Experi- 
ences of Travellers (XI-XII). Mention should be made 
also of Mr. Hulbert’s The Ohio River, a Course of Em- 
pire (1906). 

Further references will be found appended to the 
_ articles on Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wis- 
consin in The Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition). 

Opportunity to get the flavor cf the period by reading 
contemporary literature is afforded by two principal 
kinds of books. One is reminiscences, letters, and 


@14 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 


histories written by the Westerners themselves. Timo- 
thy Flint’s Recollections of the Last Ten Years (1826) will 
be found interesting; as also J. Hall, Letters from the 
West (1828), and T. Ford, History of Illinois (1854). 

The second type of materials is books of travel written 
by visitors from the East or from Europe. Works of 
this nature are always subject to limitations. Even 
when the author tries to be accurate and fair, his in- 
formation is likely to be hastily gathered and incomplete 
and his judgments unsound. Between 1800 and 1840 
the Northwest was visited, however, by many educated 
and fair-minded persons who wrote readable and trust- 
worthy descriptions of what they saw and heard. A 
complete list cannot be given here, but some of the best 
of these books are: John Melish, Travels in the United 
States of America in the Years 1806 & 1807 and 1809, 
1810 & 1811 (2 vols., 1812); William Cobbett, A Year’s 
Residence in the United States of America (1818); Henry 
B. Fearon, Sketches of America (1818); Morris Birkbeck, 
Letters from Illinois (1818); John Bradbury, T'ravels in 
the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811 
(1819); Thomas Hulme, Journal made during a Tour in 
the Western Countries of America, 1818-1819 (1828); and 
Michael Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Polities in the 
United States (1839). Copies of early editions of some 
of these works will be found in most large libraries. But 
the reader is happily not dependent on this resource. 
Almost all of the really important books of the kind are 
reprinted, with introductions and explanatory matter, 
in Reuben G. Thwaites, Early Western Travels, 1748— 
1846 (32 vols., 1904-07), which is one of our chief collec- 
tions of historical materials. 


INDEX 


Abadie, D’, Governor of the 
French, New Orleans, 33 

Adams, John, 71, 72, 74 

Alabama, Georgians in, 173 

American Fur Company, 192- 
193 

Ambherst, General Sir Jeffrey, 3, 
14 


Anderson, Robert, 201 

Aranda, Count d’, quoted, 76 

Armstrong, Fort (Rock Island), 
203 


Astor, J. J., 192 
A n, General Henry, 196 


Bank, National, 179 

Beauvais, M., of Kaskaskia, 29 

Belétre, Captain, commandant 
at Detroit, 4 

= Morris, quoted, 105- 


Black Hawk, Indian leader, 198- 
199; enemy of Americans, 198, 
199-200; rebellion, 160, 200- 
203; after defeat, 203-04; later 
life and death, 204-05 

Blue Licks, Battle of, 71 

Bouquet, Colonel Henry, 15-16, 
17 

Bushy Run, Battle of, 15-16 


Cadillac, see La Mothe-Cadillac 
Cahokia, Pontiac at, 18; school 
for Indians at, 30; under 
English, 31; taken by Clark, 
48, 55; British try to seize, 69 
Caldwell, Captain, 71 


Campbell, Colonel, British com- 
mandant at Detroit, 6 

Campus Martius, fortification 
in Ohio, 81 

Canada passes to British con- 
trol, 1 

Carver, Jonathan, 12 

Cass, Lewis, statesman of the 
Northwest, 183; life, 184-86; 
Governor of Michigan, 190; 
expedition into Mississippi 
Tegions, 190-91; aids against 
Indians, 196 

Cass Lake, 191 

Chartres, Fort, French com- 
mandant sends message to 
Indians, 14; Pontiac-at, 17; 
“center of life and fashion,” 
30; after cession to English, 
31; Saint-Ange commands, 
33; Croghan invited to, 35; 
Sterling reaches, 36 

Chillicothe (O.), 100 

Chouteau, Pierre, 32-33 

Cincinnati, named, 82; migration 
to, 99; legislature in, 131; 
education, 171 

Clark, G. R., in Illinois country, 
48; life and character, 48-49; 
delegate to Virginia Assembly, 
49; proposes capturing British 
posts, 50; commissioned by 
Virginia council, 51; expedi- 
tion, 51-56; at Kaskaskia, 
59-60, 60-61; expedition to 
Vincennes, 61-66; plans ex- 
pedition against Detroit, 67; 
failure of plan, 68; later life 


215 


216 


Clark, G. R.—Continued 
and death, 68; expedition 
against Miami towns, 71; 


agreement of 1785 with 
Indians, 79 
Clay, Henry, 164, 205 
Cleaveland, Moses, 99 
Columbus (O.), Cumberland 


Road reaches (1833), 166 
Continental Congress claims 
Northwest, 71 
Corydon (Ind.), capital removed 
from, 177 (note) 
Croghan, George, 34-36 
Cumberland Gap, 102 
Cumberland Road, 165-68, 178 
Cutler, Dr. Manasseh, 80-81, 82 
Cuyahoga River, Pontiac halts 
English at, 3 


Davis, Jefferson, 201, 203, 204 

Dearborn, Fort, 149, 152, 153 

Deckhard rifle, 120 

Defiance, Fort. 92, 94 

Detroit, occupied by French, 
2-3; surrenders to English, 4; 
in 1760, 4-5; Pontiac plans 
destruction of, 11; council with 
Indians at, 17; Clark plans 
attack, 67-68; British refuse 
surrender, 83; Wayne obtains 
cession of Indian land near, 
95; garrison at, 152; Hull’s 
expedition for relief of, 153; 
growth, 193 

Douglas, S. A., statesman of 
Northwest, 183; life, 184-87 

Duquesne, Fort, see Pitt, Fort 


East Florida, province provided 
in Proclamation of 1763, 24, 
24 (note), 33; plan for Spain 
to resume possession, 73 

Education in Northwest, 129- 
130, 170-71 

Erie Canal opened (1825), 102, 
176 

Erie, Lake, French settlement 
on, 2-3; Perry’s victory on, 154 


INDEX 


Fallen Timbers, Battle at, 92-94 

Flint, Timothy, Western Monthly 
Review, 169 

Ficrida, see East Florida, West 
Florida 

France supports Spain in her 
American policy, 72-74 

Franklin, Benjamin, advice to 
British ministers, 20; ac- 
quires western land, 38, 39; - 
on committee for boundary 
negotiation, 72, 74 

French settlements in North- 
west, 2, 28-33; Loftus’s ex- 
pedition against, 33-34; under 
English control, 36-37 

Fur trade, 191-93 


Gage, General Thomas, 34, 36 

Galena (Ill.), 195, 1¥6 

Gallatin, Albert, 164, 165 

Gallipolis, attempt to build 
French colony at, 81 

Garfield, J. A., 100 

Ghent, Peace of, 172 

Gibault, Pierre, French priest, 
48, 55, 59, 62 

Gladwyn, Major, 11, 12 

Gnadenhiitten, massacre at, 70 

Great Britain refuses to give 
up fortified posts, 83 

Greenville, Fort, 91, 94; Treaty 
of, 131 

Grenada, province provided in 
Proclamation of 1763, 24, 
24 (note) 

Grosseilliers, 
Grosseilliers 


see Ménard des 


Hamilton, Henry, Lieutenant- 
Governor at Detroit, 43; and 
the Indians, 47; part in Revo- 
lution, 57 et seq. 

Harmar, General Josiah, 80, 84, 
85 

Harmar, Fort, 80 

Harrison, W. H., in Northwest 
Territory, 131-32; on Indians, 
133-34; conference with Te- 


INDEX 


Harrison, W. H.—Continued 
cumseh, 139-40, 140-43; at 
Tippecanoe, 144-47; chief in 
command in West, 153-54, 
156 

Harrison, Fort, 144, 152 

Hayes, R. B., 100 

Helm, Lieutenant, 59 

Hennepin, Louis, 190 

Henry, Patrick, 49, 51 

Hillsborough, Lord, on British 
policy in regard to Indian 
reservations, 26 

Howard, Fort, 196 

Huguenots forbidden to emi- 
grate, 29 

Hull, General William, 138, 153, 
156 


Illinois, a county of Virginia, 56; 
after War of 1812, 161; ad- 
mitted as State (1818), 161, 
177 (note); immigration, 162; 
frontier settlers in,173; South- 
erners in, 174-75; population 
(1818), 177 (note); indentures 
182; slavery, 182-83 

Indiana, settlement, 98; formed 
from part of Northwest Terri- 
tory, 132; population (1800- 
10), 132-33; (1810-16), 161; 
(1820), 177 (note); after War 
of 1812, 161; admitted as State 
(1816), 161; immigration, 162; 
frontier settlers in, 172; South- 
erners in, 174-75; indentures, 
182; slavery, 182 

Indianapolis, Cumberland Road 
reaches, 166; capital removed 
to (1825), 177 (note) 

_ Indians, parleys with Rogers, 
3-4; incited by French against 
English, 4; relations with 

- French at Detroit, 5; menace 
to English, 7-8; protest against 
English encroachments, 8-9; 
Pontiac’s conspiracy. 9 et seq.; 
method of warfare, 15; trade 
with, 25, 44-45; reservation by 


217 


Proclamation of 1763, 25-27; 
attack Croghan’s band, 34- 
35; in Revolution, 45 et seq.; 
massacre at Gnadenhiitten, 
70; agreements with, 78-79; 
rebel against Americans, 82- 
83; incited by British, 83-84; 
punitive expedition against 
Miamis, 84-85; Wayne against, 
8% et seg.; danger on Ohio 
River from, 108; cessions by, 
132, 135, 140; relations with 
white settlers, 133-35; Te- 
cumseh’s conspiracy, 136 et 
seq.; Battle of Tippecanoe, 
144-46; raids of 1812, 149; 
menace removed after War of 
1812, 160; trouble with Winne- 
bagoes, 196-98; Black Hawk 
War, 200-03; treaties, 206-07 

Iowa, organized as Territory 
(1838), 208; admitted as State 
(1846), 208 

Itasca, Lake, 191 


Jay, John, 72, 74 

Jay Treaty. 94-95, 181 

Jefferson, Thomas, 51, 67, 72, 164 

Jefferson Barracks (St. Louis), 
203 

Jefferson City (Mo.), Cumber- 
land Road marked out to, 166 

Johnson, Allen, Jefferson and his 
Colleagues cited, 138 (note) 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, opinion of 
Northwest America, 21-22 

Johnson, Sir William, visits De- 
troit, 6; Pontiac surrenders to, 
18; sends Croghan against In- 
dians, 34 

Johnson, W. S., 39 

Johnston, A. S., 201 

Joliet, Louis, 189 


Kaskaskia, French settlement, 
28, 30; under English, 31; 
Clark captures, 48, 52-53; 
Clark at, 60-61; British 
attack, 69 


218 


Kendall, Amos, quoted, 156 

Kentucky, organized as county 
of Virginia, 49; frontier settlers 
in, 172 

eos Indian chief, 198, 200, 


Kaos, William, British Under- 
Secretary for the Colonies, 22 


Lacléde, Pierre, 32 

La Mothe-Cadillac, Antoine de, 
founds Detroit (1701), 2 

La Salle, Réné-Robert Cavelier, 
Sieur de, 2 

Laulewasikaw, “Prophet,” 
Brother of Tecumseh, 135, 
147-48 

Laurens, Henry, 72 

Le Boeuf, Fort, 14 

Lee, “Light-Horse Harry,” 89 

Leech Lake, Pike reaches, 190 

Leopard—Chesapeake affair, 138 

Lexington (Ky.), aspires to be 
“‘ Athens of the West,” 171 

Lincoln, Abraham, 184-88, 201 

Lincoln, Thomas, father of Abra- 
ham, 185 

Loftus, Major, 33 


“Long Knives,” 101 
L-os-anii-ville, 82; see also Cin- 
cinnati 


Louisiana Purchase, 16], 190 
Louisville (Ky.), education in, 
171 


McAdam, John, devises road 
construction, 165-66 

Mackinac, Fort, 152, 153 

Malden, Fort, 153 

Marietta (O.), founded, 81; 
settlers from New England, 
99 

Marquette, Jacques, Jesuit mis- 
sionary, 189 

Mason, George, 51 

Massac, Fort, 52 

Maysville Road Bill (1830), 178 

Ménard des Grosseilliers, 189 


INDEX 


Miami, Fort, 88, 92 


as Terri- 
tory (1849), 208 

Mississippi, Georgians in, 173 

Mississippi Valley, 24-25 

Missouri, population of Terri- 
tory (1812-18), 161-62; fron- 
tier settlers in, 173 

Monroe, Fortress, 204 

Montreal, fall of (1760), 1 


National Road, see Cumberland 
Road 


New England, westward migra- 
tion from, 99, 175-77 

New Orleans, Indians seek equip- 
ment at, 18; Jackson’s victory, 


in West, 168 
Niagara, council with Indians at, 
17 


Northwest Territory, extent of, 
1-2; French settlements, 2; 
Franklin advises British to 
retain, 20; ignorance of coun- 
try, 21-22; questions of settle- 
ment and government, 22 e¢ 
seg.; settlement, 37 ef seq.; 
79-82; Continental Congress 
claims, 71; Treaty of Paris 
gives to U. a 75; state claims 
yield to nation, 77; migration 
to, 97 et seg.; character of 
country, 110-12; pioneer life, 
112 et seg.; in War of 1812, 
151 etseg.; loses frontier charac- 
ter, 162; religion, 170; educa- 
tion, 170-71;  secti 
173-74; Southern influence, 
176-77; national issues, 178- 
79; form of government, 179- 
80; slavery, 180-84; explora- 
tions upon upper Mississi: Ppl, 
189-91; fatale; 191-93; cot 
mining, 194-95; after Black 
Hawk War, 205-06; Indian 
treaties, 206-08; bibliography, 


—_ 


INDEX 


Northwest Territory—Cont'd 
211-14; see also names of 
States 


Qhio, settlement, 98 et seq.; 
routes to, 102, et seq.; formed 
from part of Northwest Terri- 
tory, 132; admitted as State 
(1802), 132, 165; means of 
transportation in, 157; fron- 
tier settlers in, 172; Southern- 
ers in, 174-75 

Ohio Company, 39, 80-81 

Ohio River, emigrants on, 106-09 

Ordinance of 1787, 77-78, 131, 
180, 181, 182 

Oswego, Pontiac surrenders at, 18 

Ottawa (Ill.), French settlement 
near, 2 

Ouiatanon, 35 


Paine, R. D., The Fight for a 
Free Sea cited, 153 (note) 

Paris, Treaty of (1783), 20, 22, 75 

Parkman, Francis, quoted, 5-6, 
19, 32-33 

Perry, Commodore O. H., 154 

Pike, Lieutenant Z. M., 190 

Pitt, Fort, 15, 16, 17, 34, 36 

Pittman, Captain, 34 

Pontiac, Indian chief, 3; con- 
spiracy, 9 ef seg.; power 
broken, 17; further plots, 34; 
meets Croghan, 35 

Presqu’isle (Erie), council with 
Indians at, 17 

Proclamation of 1763, 24, 24 
(note), 41-42 

“Prophet,” see Laulewasikaw 

Prophet’s Town, 139 

Putnam, General Rufus, 80, 81, 
82 


Quebec, province provided under 
Proclamation of 1763, 24, 
24 (note) 

Quebec Act (1774), 41-43 


Radisson, Pierre, 189 
Raisin River, 153 


219 


Rayneval, secretary to French 
Foreign Minister, 74 

Recovery, Fort, 91 

Red Bird, Indian chief, 196, 197 

Revolution, effects on West, 45 

Rocheblave, commandant at 
Kaskaskia, 54 

Rogers, Major Robert, 3, 4 

Roosevelt, Theodore, quoted, 61, 
156 


Sackville, Fort, 55 

Saint Ange de Bellerive, 18, 19, 
33, 36 

St. Anthony, Falls of, Henne- 
pin reaches, 190 

St. Clair, General Arthur, 81, 
84, 85-87, 89 

St. Joseph, Fort, 69-70 

St. Louis, French settlement 
near, 2; French town, 18; 
established (1764), 32; Saint- 
Ange retires to, 36; under 
Spanish rule, 69; education in, 
171 

St. Louis, Fort, 2 

Ste. Genevieve, 32 

Schoolcraft, Henry, 191 

Scioto Company, 81 

“Seven Ra , 80, 99-100 

Sheridan, "SL corinne 
P. H., 100 

Sherman, John, 100 

Sherman, General W. T., 100 

Sinclair, Lieutenant-Governor 
Patrick, 69 

Slavery, 180-84 

Snelling, Fort, 196 

Spain, cessions to, 18, 28; ally 
of France, 69; seizes Fort 
St. Joseph, 69-70; American 
policy, 72-73; plan presented 
at peace negotiation, 73-74 

Stanwix, Fort, Treaty of, 78 

““Starved Rock,” 2 

Sterling, Captain Thomas, 36 

Stillman, Major, 202 

Symmes, Judge J. C., of N. J., 
82 


220 


Tariff, attitude of 
toward, 178-79 
Taylor, Zachary, 201 
Tecumseh, plans confederacy, 
135 et seg.; at Prophei’s 
Town, 139; confers with Harri- 
son at Vincennes, 139-40, 
140-43; sympathy with Brit- 
ish, 148, 150; joins British 
in 1812, 152; killed, 154 

Thames, Battle of the, 154 

Tippecanoe, Battle of, 144-47 

Transportation, difficulties, 163— 
64; highways, 164-68; stage 
lines, 167; steamboats, 168- 
70; Erie Canal, 176; roads and 
canals, 178; on Mississippi 
River, 195 


Vandalia, projected colony, 39 

Vandalia (Ill.), Cumberland 
Road graded to, 166 

Vaudreuil, Pierre de Rigaud, 
Marquis de, Governor of 
Canada, 1, 3 

Venango, Fort, 14 

Vergennes, Charles Gravier, 
Comite de, French Foreign 
Minister, 74 

Vigo, Francois, 60-61 

Villiers, Neyon de, 31 

Vincennes, French colony, 2; 
under British, 31; surrenders 
to Clark, 55; captured by 
British, 58-59; Clark retakes, 
63-66, 69; Harrison and Te- 
cumseh in conference at, 139- 
140, 140-43 


Waite, Chief Justice M. R., 100 | 
Walpole, Thomas, 39 
War of 1812, popular in West, 
151; standing army, 152; 
volunteers called, 152; in 
the West, 153-54; military 
organization, 154-56; lack of 
transportation facilities, 157- _ 
158; life of frontier soldiers, — 
158-59; peace (1815), 160 


Warrior, Government 
supply steamer in Black 
Hawk War, 203 


Washington, George, acquires — 
western land, 38-39 = 
Wayne, “Mad Anthony,” 89 


et seq. 
—_ Fort, 94, 152; Treaty of, 


Wekau, Indian chief, 197 

Welby, Adlard, quoted, 163 

West Florida, province provided 
Proclamation of 1763, | 


Western Reserve, 99, 102, 172, 175 

Wharton, Samuel, 39 

Whistler, Major, _ CS a z= 

Wilkinson, General James, 

Willing, The, Clark’s bos boat, on 
64, 66, 67 ; 

Winnebago, Fort, 197 

Wisconsin admitted as 
(1848), 208 

Wythe, George, 51 


State 


AN OUTLINE OF THE PLAN OF 
THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA 


The fifty titles of the Series fall into eight topical sequences or groups, 
each with a dominant theme of its own— 


I. The Morning of America 
TIME: 1492-1763 


theme of the first sequence is the struggle of nations for the 
possession of the New World. The mariners of four European king- 
doms—Spain, Portugal, France, and England—are intent upon the 
discovery of a new route to Asia. They come upon the American continent 
which blocks the way. Spain plants colonies im the south, lured by gold. 
France, in pursuit of the fur trade, plants colonies in the north. Englishmen, 
in search of homes and of a wider freedom, occupy the Atlantic seaboard. 
These Englishmen come in time to need the land into which the French 
have penetrated by way of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and a 
mighty struggle between the two nations takes place in the wilderness, 
ending in the expulsion of the French. This sequence comprises ten volumes: 


I. THE RED MAN’S CONTINENT, dy Elsworth Huntington 
2. THE SPANISH conQquERORS, by Irving Berdine Richman 
3. ELIZABETHAN SEA-DoGS, by William Wood 
4- CRUSADERS OF NEW FRANCE, by William Bennett Munra 
§- PIONEERS OF THE OLD souTH, 4y Mary Fahnston 
6. THE FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND, Sy Charles M. Andrews 
J. DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON, by Maud Wilder Goodwin 
$. THE QUAKER coLontEs, by Sydney G. Fisher 
g. couontaL Foixways, by Charles M. Andrews 
10, THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE, Jy George M. Wrong 


The Winning of Independence 
TIME: 1763-1815 


The French peril has passed, and the great territory between the Alle. 


ghanies and the Mississippi is now open to the Englishmen on the seaboard, 
with no enemy to contest their right of way except the Indian. But the 
question arises whether these Englishmen in the New World shall submit 
to political dictation from the King and Parliament of England. To decide 
this question the War of the Revolution is fought; the Union is born: 
and the second war with England follows. Seven volumes: 


11. THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION, by Carl Becker 

12. WASHINGTON AND HIS COMRADES IN ARMS, by George M. Wrong 
13. THE FATHERS OF THE CONSTITUTION, by Max Farrand 

14. WASHINGTON AND HIS COLLEAGUES, by Henry Jones Ford 

15. JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES, by Allen Fohnson 

16. JOHN MARSHALL AND THE CONSTITUTION, dy Edward S. Corwin 
17. THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA, by Ralph D. Paine 


III. The Vision of the West 
TIME: 1750-1890 


The theme of the third sequence is the American frontier—the conquest 
-of the continent from the Alleghanies to the Pacific Ocean. The story covers 
nearly a century and a half, from the first crossing of the Alleghanies by 
the backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas (about 
1750) to the heyday of the cowboy on the Great Plains in the latter part 
of the nineteenth century. This is the marvelous tale of the greatest migra~ 
tions in history, told in nine volumes as follows: 


18. PIONEERS OF THE OLD souTHwEst, by Constance Lindsay Skinner 


19. THE OLD NORTHWEST, by Frederic Austin Ogg 

20. THE REIGN OF ANDREW JACKSON, dy Frederic Austin Ogg 
21. THE PATHS OF INLAND COMMERCE, by Archer B. Hulbert 

22. ADVENTURERS OF OREGON, by Constance Lindsay Skinner 
23. THE SPANISH BORDERLANDS, by Herbert E. Bolton 

24. TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson 
25. THE FORTY-NINERS, by Stewart Edward White 

26. THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER, by Emerson Hough 


IV. The Storm of Secession 


TIME: 1830-1876 


The curtain rises on the gathering storm of secession. The theme of the 
fourth sequence is the preservation of the Union, which carries with it the 
extermination of slavery. Six volumes as follows: 


27. THE COTTON KINGDOM, by William E. Dodd 

28. THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE, by Fesse Macy 

29. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson 
go. THE DAY OF THE CONFEDERACY, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson 

3i- CAPTAINS OF THE CIVIL war, by William Wood 

j2. THE SEQUEL OF APpPpomATTOX, by Walter Lynwood Fleming 


V. The Intellectual Life 


Two volumes follow on the higher national life, telling of the nation’s great 
teachers and interpreters: 


33- THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION, by Edwin E. Slosson 
34- THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN LITERATURE, by Bliss Perry 


VI. The Epic of Commerce and Industry 


The sixth sequence is devoted to the romance of industry and business, 
and the dominant theme is the transformation caused by the inflow of 
immigrants and the development and utilization of mechanics on a great 
scale. The long age of muscular power has passed, and the era of mechanical 
power has brought with it a new kind of civilization. Eight volumes: 


3$- OUR FOREIGNERS, Sy Samuel P. Orth 

36. THE OLD MERCHANT MARINE, by Ralph D. Paine 

37- THE AGE OF INVENTION, by Holland Thompson 

38. THE RAILROAD BUILDERS, by Fohn Moody 

39- THE AGE OF BIG BUSINESS, by Burton F. Hendrick 

40. THE ARMIES OF LABOR, by Samuel P. Orth - 
41. THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL, by John Moody 

42. THE NEW souTH, fy Holland Thompson 


AD A dh 0 aah ah wh) 
VII. The Era of World Power 


The seventh sequence carries on the story of government and diplomacy — 
and political expansion from the Reconstruction (1876) to the present day, 
in six volumes: 


43. THE BOSS AND THE MACHINE, by Samuel P. Orth 
44. THE CLEVELAND ERA, by Henry Fones Ford 
45. THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE, by Solon F. Buck 
46. THE PATH OF EMPIRE, by Carl Russell Fish 
47. THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS TIMES, by Harold Howland 
_ 48. WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD WAR, by Charles Seymour 


VIII. Our Neighbors 


Now to round out the story of the continent, the Hispanic peoples on 
the south and the Canadians on the north are taken up where they were 
dropped further back in the Series, and these peoples are followed down 
to the present day: 


49. THE CANADIAN DOMINION, dy Oscar D. Skelton 
50. THE HISPANIC NATIONS OF THE NEW WORLD, by William R. Shepherd 


The Chronicles of America is thus a great synthesis, giving a new projec- 
tion and a new interpretation of American History. These narratives are 
works of real scholarship, for every one is written after an exhaustive 
examination of the sources. Many of them contain new facts; some of them 
—such as those by Howland, Seymour, and Hough—are founded on inti- 
mate personal knowledge. But the originality of the Series lies, not chiefly 
in new facts, but rather in new ideas and new combinations of old facts. 

The General Editor of the Series is Dr. Allen Johnson, Chairman of the 
Department of History of Yale University, and the entire work has been 
planned, prepared, and published under the control of the Council's 
Committee on Publications of Yale University. 


YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 


143 ELM STREET, NEW HAVEN 
§22 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 


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